HAF special feature: Bouvy Enkobo, Kinshasa, DRC.
“Hommage Annee, 2013, is a tribute I reflect on mothers in my community, which is a remote area and very poor. Portraits of these mothers with this pain and suffering and hoping to feed, educated their children. Cladding their families by doing field work with such concern that their children will not live in the same situation” Bouvy Enkobo
Bouvy Enkobo, painter and sculptor, studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Kinshasa in the late 1990s. He employs an innovative approach in terms of technique, theme, and color palette. He was born into a family of artists, including his father Modste Enkobo, a sculptor. Bouvy currently lives and works in Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo(DRC), and his work is a reflection of the tumultuous and dramatic environment of our time.
In his picture, titled Hommage (200 x 200 cm), Bouvy explores the women’s hard work, particularly in fields, of his town. Populations in areas of the DRC such as Kinshasa are experiencing a food shortage. The World Food Programme (WFP) says that the government’s failure to invest in education, health care, sanitation, infrastructure, and agriculture undermines the country’s ability to feed itself. Low level of government spending, combined with a decline in foreign aid is creating an alarming situation for the nearly 10 percent of the country’s population facing an acute shortage of food.
“The families have poor diet…They have a high vulnerability to diseases and also to natural disasters because they are poor, because they have no balanced diet. They do not eat properly and so their body is more vulnerable to diseases. Of course, because of diseases, because of people who are not properly fed, it causes major disruption to crops, of course livestock, and altogether infrastructure (WFP).”
WFP reports that a staggering 95 percent of the people in the DRC earn less than $2 a day. In addition, the organization indicates that nine percent of children under the age of five are severely malnourished, and 43 percent suffer from chronic malnutrition.