Steve Bandoma was born in 1981 in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo, where he graduated with a degree in Fine Art from the Academies des Beaux-Arts. Bandoma uses an energetic combination of watercolour, ink and collage- often clippings from contemporary magazines, to highlight the grotesque injustices that have scarred his country. Yet his work, with its deft touch, is brimming with the creative vitality that has never deserted the Congo. In Colonised, Bandoma deftly presents a disturbing satirised version of a traditional fetish sculpture - where instead of nails inserted from the outside, prying fingers and wandering limbs appear to pop out of and desecrate the corpse like figure now perhaps transformed in to a child soldier. Bandoma's work has been exhibited at Focus10, Contemporary Art Africa, Basel, Switzerland (2010), in Currencies in Contemporary African Art at Museum Africa, Johannesburg, South Africa (2010) and at Continent on the Move - Unlocking Culture, hosted by ASA Project, Frieze Art fair, London (2011). He had his first solo exhibition in London, at Jack Bell Gallery, in 2012.

Steve Bandoma was born in 1981 in Kinshasa. He studied there until 2004, when he started his career in South Africa. He is well known and appreciated for his imaginary portraits of the inhabitants of his city, contemporary embodiments of traditional African gods and fetish objects or, satirical references to politics and society. Steve Bandoma combines different techniques, acrylic, watercolour, felt-tip pen, ink, and collage, often on handmade paper, to give these works tangible energy. Splashes of paint and bursts of colour add violence and urgency to his work. As a major figure in the Kinshasa art scene, Bandoma participated in the 2015 exhibition Beauté Congo 1926-2015 at the Cartier Foundation in Paris, and in Kongo Across the Waters at the New Orleans Museum of Art in the United States.