Cerveau Series

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Mental Cartography2018 - 2023Series of works in which each piece from the Cerveau series is created once a year.

Regaining the territory

Initiated in 2017, Cerveau (Brain) marks Hadassa Ngamba’s first series of paintings. The title establishes a parallel between the human brain, territorial landscapes, and the circulation of knowledge. Drawing on her training in criminology, Ngamba approaches the canvas with forensic precision, using the series to interrogate how cartography, industrialization, and resource extraction have historically functioned as tools for fragmenting the African continent. Inspired in part during a 40-day journey from Katanga to Kasaï, Cerveau moves beyond passive critique, transforming painting into a site of active epistemic restitution.

Texte Ralph Dum

"Having grown up in Boma - the prototype of Congolese industrialization - and in Lubumbashi -a large mining town in the Haut-Katanga region, I started working with maps. The maps reveal the signs of exploitation. My deep-seated decision to become an artist stems from the dissection of humanistic scientific, geological and political maps on which civilizations were based and on which capitalist institutions were built. When I went to Congo Central as part of my research, I discovered that the map of my country was drawn with the intention of serving an industry, to produce goods that were almost entirely for export. To this day, maps are drawn and roads built for the purpose of dispossessing local people and generating wealth and power elsewhere. This is an assymmetry that I want to address in my work."

Quote Hadassa Ngamba

The colonial cartography of Congo is a key element in Ngamba’s artistic research. She is interested in how the mapping of the country’s resources enabled the exploitation by imperialist capitalist structures. Through her work the multi-disciplinary artist challenges the foundations on which capitalism was build and confronts the inhumane character of the failing and unequal system. Deeply rooted in her personal histories and experiences, her work explores the country’s past, with the intention to overturn the dominating narratives in a process of healing. Ngamba views her work as a way to reveal the truths to a new audience, at home and abroad, and be part of the ‘repair’ of the country and its people.

Texte by Bruno Claessens

© 2026 Hadassa Ngamba Studio - All rights reserved.

Cerveau II+
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2019
Malachite, cobalt, cassiterite, tar and Chalk on coffee-tainted cotton.
~120 x 250 cm
Lubumbashi, RDC
Hadassa Ngamba replaces traditional oil paint with raw mineral pigments drawn directly from Congolese soil: malachite, cobalt, and cassiterite. This gesture is not illustrative but declarative—the material itself carries meaning. She repositions these materials from global commodities to agents of memory, presence, and repair.
Colonial mapping practices once constructed the Kongo as an “empty” territory, a calculated erasure that denied the presence, histories, and sovereignty of its people in order to justify domination. In response, Cerveau II reimagines these mapped spaces, as mental spaces, as dense, layered networks in which land and mind become inseparable.
The scattered green formations of malachite operate as more than visual elements. They mark the return of human presence into spaces once rendered void. Where colonial systems imposed absence, Ngamba reinstates life—each mineral trace embodying individuals, agency, and the enduring relationship between people and land.
In Cerveau II, the canvas emerges as a living, interconnected field where individual nodes weave into a collective web. Through this relational architecture, presence expands into community, mirroring the architecture of complex systems: dynamic, self-organizing networks that persist, adapt, and reclaim space against forces of erasure. Predating Ngamba’s formalized exploration of “African Intelligence,” Cerveau II directly challenges rigid, imperial hierarchies. By positioning knowledge as decentralized, relational, and organic, the work affirms that the continent’s living fabric has always been fundamentally interconnected, deeply adaptive, and resilient.
Exhibitions:
2025 Liverpool Biennial - BEDROCK at Tate Liverpool + Rita North. Liverpool - UK.
Harper's BAZAR UK
Observer
2023 Kunsthalle Mianz. Mainz, DE.
2021 - 2022 CC Stombeek. Brussels, BE.
2019 Lubumbashi Biennial. Lubumbashi, DRC.
New York Times
Photography by Stuart Whipps
Detail of Cerveau II
Cerveau IV+
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2023
Oil on canvas.
220 x 350 cm
Critique d'art
Brussels, BE
Cerveau IV and Banza - Mambu chair, view of the Installation +
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2023
Banza – Mambu, chair sculpture.
Brussels, BE
Cerveau I+
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2017-2018
Malachite, white gravel, acrylic, coffee on hard cotton.
~ 65 x 114 cm
Lubumbashi, DRC
Cerveau III+
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2020
Oil painting on canvas stretched over two Belgian wooden surveying rods, fitted with iron tips painted red and white.
100 × 220 × 150 cm - two Belgian ranging rods
Ghent, BE
Exhibition:
At Édition Populaire
Tshibumba K.M. and Hadassa Ngamba, Estafette, duo exhibition 2020, with window displays located on Bloemstraat and Bleekhofstraat in Antwerp.
GLEAN Magazine

Cerveau II+
+
2019
Malachite, cobalt, cassiterite, tar and Chalk on coffee-tainted cotton.
~120 x 250 cm
Lubumbashi, RDC
Hadassa Ngamba replaces traditional oil paint with raw mineral pigments drawn directly from Congolese soil: malachite, cobalt, and cassiterite. This gesture is not illustrative but declarative—the material itself carries meaning. She repositions these materials from global commodities to agents of memory, presence, and repair.
Colonial mapping practices once constructed the Kongo as an “empty” territory, a calculated erasure that denied the presence, histories, and sovereignty of its people in order to justify domination. In response, Cerveau II reimagines these mapped spaces, as mental spaces, as dense, layered networks in which land and mind become inseparable.
The scattered green formations of malachite operate as more than visual elements. They mark the return of human presence into spaces once rendered void. Where colonial systems imposed absence, Ngamba reinstates life—each mineral trace embodying individuals, agency, and the enduring relationship between people and land.
In Cerveau II, the canvas emerges as a living, interconnected field where individual nodes weave into a collective web. Through this relational architecture, presence expands into community, mirroring the architecture of complex systems: dynamic, self-organizing networks that persist, adapt, and reclaim space against forces of erasure. Predating Ngamba’s formalized exploration of “African Intelligence,” Cerveau II directly challenges rigid, imperial hierarchies. By positioning knowledge as decentralized, relational, and organic, the work affirms that the continent’s living fabric has always been fundamentally interconnected, deeply adaptive, and resilient.
Exhibitions:
2025 Liverpool Biennial - BEDROCK at Tate Liverpool + Rita North. Liverpool - UK.
Harper's BAZAR UK
Observer
2023 Kunsthalle Mianz. Mainz, DE.
2021 - 2022 CC Stombeek. Brussels, BE.
2019 Lubumbashi Biennial. Lubumbashi, DRC.
New York Times
Photography by Stuart Whipps
Detail of Cerveau II
Cerveau IV+
+
2023
Oil on canvas.
220 x 350 cm
Critique d'art
Brussels, BE
Cerveau IV and Banza - Mambu chair, view of the Installation +
+
2023
Banza – Mambu, chair sculpture.
Brussels, BE
Cerveau I+
+
2017-2018
Malachite, white gravel, acrylic, coffee on hard cotton.
~ 65 x 114 cm
Lubumbashi, DRC
Cerveau III+
+
2020
Oil painting on canvas stretched over two Belgian wooden surveying rods, fitted with iron tips painted red and white.
100 × 220 × 150 cm - two Belgian ranging rods
Ghent, BE
Exhibition:
At Édition Populaire
Tshibumba K.M. and Hadassa Ngamba, Estafette, duo exhibition 2020, with window displays located on Bloemstraat and Bleekhofstraat in Antwerp.
GLEAN Magazine