Pierre-Manau Ngoula, affectionately known as Pierre-Man’s, was born in 1993 in Brazzville, the Capital of the Republic of Congo. She studied literature, then furthered her studies in audio-visual at a school of visual arts in Dakar, Senegal. She went through the artistic and very capable hands of Frantz Zephirin when she took part in a painting and video workshop that he was conducting at ATELIERS SAHM art centre.
Her artistic world is mainly dominated by the colour red and it works on themes such as the body, memories and memoir to underline social reality.
In terms of the body she addresses sexual violence on female bodies. Countries such as the Republic of Congo, Mali, Somalia, Senegal and Egypt still practice genital mutilation in girl children and Ngoula seeks to highlight the problem with this need for control over female bodies and female sexual pleasure.
Going into the creation of her art for an exhibition Ngoula imagined a physical prejudice that she could not quite put her finger on due to its complexities, and manipulated, cut and joined material as though to repair the effects of that prejudice as well as the said prejudice itself. This whole process validated her status as a feminist artist.
She has participated in group exhibitions at the French Institute of Congo, SAHM Workshops and at the Biennale of Contemporary Art Dakar. Her work has been acclaimed and awarded the Goddy Leye Award and has been recommended for the Jury Prize. She has been said to produce work with high sensitivity which has also led her to receive the Gaestealiers Krone Aary grant for Congolese women artists.
The Artist Residency program in association with Cite Internationale Des Arts in France have an initiative where they chose ten artists from all over the world in the sphere of visual arts, cinema and performing arts for a six-month residency as part of the Unique Residency Host Program. This was to help artists whose work would be heavily affected by the outbreak of Covid-19 with their projects. They did this by providing them with support as well as a dynamic and caring working space. One of the artists who were offered this opportunity out of a pool of just under 250 applications was Ngoula and the selection was based on the journey each artist had taken in their work as well as the quality of the projects each artist still sought to do. Ngoula has also won the Daniel and Nina Carasso Foundation & Cite de Arts program through the Artist Residency program.
