Biography
Hervé Mbelo is a visual artist from the Democratic Republic of Congo currently living in Montreal (Canada). In 2010, he obtained his Bachelor's degree in Visual Arts, Painting option at the Academy of Fine Arts in Kinshasa. From 2013 to 2018, he was hired and worked as an Assistant Professor in the Painting Department at the Academy of Fine Arts in Kinshasa. In 2022, he completed his Master's degree in Fine Arts, Specializing in Multidimensional Expression Painting at the China Academy of Art. He is currently pursuing his Doctorate in Arts Studies and Practices at the University of Quebec in Montreal. His current research in research-creation focuses on "Painting the landscape differently. The artist facing ecological disasters". He has participated in several biennials and international exhibitions, including the 2nd International Oil Painting Biennial at Dafen Art Museum in Shenzhen (China), the 9th Beijing International Biennial 2022 (China), the 2nd Edition of the International Art Exhibition at Jinwen Art Museum in Sydney (Australia).

Artistic approach
My artistic practice consists of transforming, deconstructing and reappropriating images, generating fragile and irregular forms, passing from nothingness to existence, from abstract to concrete, from uselessness to utility. Using the method of image fusion, I compose works integrating images of waste, portraits and characters, with the aim of externalizing and materializing my inner crises related to environmental discomfort, encouraging me to explore reality within the unreal.
Today, I propose a bold fusion between the construction and deconstruction of ecological landscapes, revealing environmental calamities. Through a striking aesthetic, proposing a poignant reflection on our interaction with the environment, I offer new visual and conceptual horizons. I carry out work by launching into a field of proposals for new spaces, new perspectives of representation and realities of ecological landscapes. Through figuration, these landscapes put together, are transformed into creations putting in symbiosis the different spirits of environmental environments that offer food for thought, readings and real possibilities of pictorial artistic creations. The characters sensitively amalgamate the content and the form, and poetically confront the omnipresent eco-anxiety linked to a feeling of helplessness in the face of contemporary environmental issues and various ecological disasters. The insistence and persistence of representing with fragments the ecological realities of my lived environment pushes me to remain in a state of non-abandonment as to the theme and the creative process of my creations, by the method of coding and decoding between the aesthetics of beauty and that of ugliness.
