LB°18 Artists

ARKIV

Christian Nyampeta

Sometimes It Was Beautiful, 2018, HD Video, Christian Nyampeta. Luleåbiennalen 2020.

Christian Nyampeta (b. 1981, Kigali) is an artist and organiser currently based in New York.

Sometimes It Was Beautiful narrates the meeting between improbable friends gathered to watch In the Footsteps of the Witch Doctor, one of the six films by the Swedish cinematographer Sven Nykvist that he made in or about Congo between 1948 and 1952. Common to these unlikely friends is their past visit to Stockholm’s Museum of Ethnography, where an archive of Sven Nykvist’s parents is kept, documenting their life in Congo as Swedish missionaries. The strange friends include politician Yasser Arafat, postcolonial theorist Leela Gandhi, human rights activist Rigoberta Menchú, politician Robert Mugabe, playwright Wole Soyinka, and Crown Princess Victoria of Sweden. Also the film director Andrei Tarkovsky shows up, the politician Winnie Mandela has something on her mind, while the 14th Dalai Lama is rumoured to be near.

Christian Nyampeta (b. 1981, Kigali) is an artist and organiser currently based in New York.

Work

Sometimes It Was Beautiful, 2018
HD Video

Location

The Silver Museum
21.11–14.2