Passionate about meetings, confrontations and exchanges, playwright, journalist, author, and performer Bibish Marie Louise Mumbu explores the liminal spaces between Congo and her experience of migration.

“I want to circulate freely, without limits – geographically, culturally, aesthetically, mentally, emotionally, boundlessly, and intimately.”

Her play Bibish from Kinshasa explores the cultural, political, and philosophical frictions that taint the relationships between the Western world and Africa. The play follows one journalist who leaves her native Congo looking for a more promising future, creating a world that’s part storytelling, part talk show and part informal meal among friends.

On her play La Reine Nzinga, co-written by Tatiana Zinga and Alexis Diamond, Bibish reflects: “It is a step in our journey to decolonize the arts: interrogate our own approach, then develop and free it. This means redefining conventions, shifting barriers, introducing new aesthetics by weaving together Congolese oral traditions, African dance, non-Western music and a dramaturgy of the stage. It is a marriage of documentary techniques with autofiction and official narratives with intimate poetry. We call for a new historiographic theatre, one that deconstructs our received capital-H History to replace it with a rich plurality of histories. To tell our own stories, in our own ways, in our own voices, with our own accents.”

Bibish Marie Louise Mumbu’s artistic commitment is to gender-based analysis, combined with community work. An Afro-feminist, activist and artist, she is recognized for her skills both in facilitating workshops and in training with her peers, involving active listening and respect.