Godelive Kasangati Kabena is a photographer and painter born in 1996 in the Democratic Republic of Congo. A graduate in painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Kinshasa, she discovered photography in 2016 using her cell phone. The following year, she followed training in photography initiated by EUNIC-RDC, the Goethe Institut and the Academy of Fine Arts of Kinshasa.

His artistic practice consists of the production of personal portraits, masks, postcards of isolated or familiar places in black and white. She also uses video and painting in her creations dealing with “self-definition and interhuman relationships”.

Through photography, Godelive expresses what words cannot explain, she tells a story that she confronts with the present in order to (re)construct an identity. This is how in 2020, the native of Goma will represent the DRC at the 12th edition of “Les Rencontres de Bamako” where she presented self-portraits in black and white. The same year, she took part in the Yango Biennale de Kinshasa II reflection workshops, during the exhibition of the work of the rising star of Kinshasa photography, Gosette Lubondo. In 2021, she launches her two projects: “Étrangère” and “Family Diary”. Projects that transcribe his own emotions on subjects such as his parents' divorce.

For the 7th edition of the Lubumbashi biennial, his project deals with the place of domestic animals in Congolese society. From the word “Mbwa”, dog in Lingala, one of the four national languages of the country, Godlive will, through a series of photos, retrace the history of the dog called “Basenji”, a dog descended from the Levier breed. Egyptian, from precolonial times to the present day.