---

Exhibition Research Lab is pleased to announce KUAMEN: Mask in Mutation, a display of artworks created during the artist’s two-week residency at Liverpool School of Arts and Creative Industries.

Kuamen has collaborated with Nsaka Sandrine Nganga – a French-Congolese fashion designer and multidisciplinary artist, who teaches digital fashion, technical design, and 3D design at Liverpool John Moores University (LJMU).

Resulting from this residency are a video and a prototype mask created with Fab Lab (LJMU’s 3D lab). The mask is a key feature in Kuamen’s performative practice. It is a persona, a hybrid character inspired by African traditions and aesthetics. It is also a futuristic urban figure, at once ritual object and digital avatar. In the video, the mask navigates the shores of Liverpool, imbued with remnants of colonial histories and the resonance of contemporary diasporic existence.

These two pieces are presented as “work in progress in an artist studio” format that includes traces of Kuamen’s thinking process, from books on Black culture to writing and preparatory sketches.

—

Kuamen is a London-born Paris-based musician, poet, rapper, and self-taught multidisciplinary artist of Mauritian-Congolese heritage whose practice includes drawing, painting, sculpture, photography, video, installation, and performance.

As a visual artist, Kuamen is currently presenting his first solo exhibition entitled Kuamen: Creep to the mic like a phantom at Yamamoto Keiko Rochaix, London, until 14 February 2026. His work I Have Also Seen (2025) was performed at ERL Gallery in June 2025, ahead of the Liverpool Biennial. Other projects include Drawing Together 201 Exquisite Corpses, Museum im Bellpark Kriens, 2022 (curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist), and commissions and residencies with Fonds de dotation Verrecchia and Musée Rodin (Meudon).

—

KUAMEN: Mask in Mutation is part of Exhibition Research Lab’s 2025-26 decolonial programme led by Dr Christine Eyene and supported by LJMU’s Enhancing Research Culture Grant.

—————–

KUAMEN: Mask in Mutation
5 – 27 February 2026

Exhibition launch: Tue 10 Feb, 5:00pm – 8:00pm

Exhibition Research Lab
John Lennon Art and Design Building
Duckinfield Street
Liverpool L3 5RD
Gallery open: Monday – Friday, 11:00am – 4:00pm.
www.exhibition-research-lab.co.uk