Picha & Subjective Editions, 2026
French-English, 192 full-colour pages, 16.5 x 22 cm
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Lubumbashi is not a city to be easily navigated; it is a city to be lived, loved, hated, remembered and constantly transformed. This Subjective Atlas of Lubumbashi looks beyond the colonial grid, railway lines and mining infrastructure of Congo’s second-largest city. On the initiative of independent art and research centre Picha, nearly a hundred inhabitants have mapped their lived experiences. Their drawings, photo series and alternative cartographies acknowledge both the city’s wounds and its cultural vitality, tracing fear and affection, displacement and belonging, neighbourhood economies, night-time rhythms, rituals, and personal landmarks. We see flowers bloom despite hardship, braids become living archives, and clothing shape urban aesthetics. These poetic gestures resist being pinned down to coordinates, but unveil a constellation of interconnected worlds where memory, labour, creativity, pain and resilience meet, allowing us to imagine potential futures from this point forward.
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ISBN 978-9-46-444804-7
This publication is a result of collaboration between Subjective Editions and Atelier Picha
Editor-in-chief: Annelys de Vet
Editorial team: Grady Bizaki Fungafunga, Filip De Boeck, Semi Kansense, Jean-Sylvain Tshilumba Mukendi, Gaëlle Van Lede
Picha & Subjective Editions, 2026
French-English, 192 full-colour pages, 16.5 x 22 cm
—
Lubumbashi is not a city to be easily navigated; it is a city to be lived, loved, hated, remembered and constantly transformed. This Subjective Atlas of Lubumbashi looks beyond the colonial grid, railway lines and mining infrastructure of Congo’s second-largest city. On the initiative of independent art and research centre Picha, nearly a hundred inhabitants have mapped their lived experiences. Their drawings, photo series and alternative cartographies acknowledge both the city’s wounds and its cultural vitality, tracing fear and affection, displacement and belonging, neighbourhood economies, night-time rhythms, rituals, and personal landmarks. We see flowers bloom despite hardship, braids become living archives, and clothing shape urban aesthetics. These poetic gestures resist being pinned down to coordinates, but unveil a constellation of interconnected worlds where memory, labour, creativity, pain and resilience meet, allowing us to imagine potential futures from this point forward.
—
ISBN 978-9-46-444804-7
This publication is a result of collaboration between Subjective Editions and Atelier Picha
Editor-in-chief: Annelys de Vet
Editorial team: Grady Bizaki Fungafunga, Filip De Boeck, Semi Kansense, Jean-Sylvain Tshilumba Mukendi, Gaëlle Van Lede
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