For Enkobo art became a vocation from childhood. At the age of 15 he enrolled at the Institute des Beaux-arts de Kinshasa, specialising in painting, which remains his primary discipline and dedication despite exploration and studies in a range of other media from photography to animation. Quite early on Bouvy has decided to take time in forging his own path, ideas and style, away from the highly figurative and decorative Congolese style popularised by the likes of Cheri Samba. In doing so he found himself wanting to speak about the life of Kinshasa, beyond specific personalities, which inhabit it but rather as an emotional landscape at the heart of his country’s difficult contemporary history. In his work waves of colour and form document the emotions, pathos and rhythms of the city, utilising decollage as an entry point into the anonymous and the marginal of the Kinois.
Enkobo has exhibited widely in Hong Kong, DRC and Belgium, taking part in the Maendelo exhibition at the Walloon Parliament and Walloon Contemporary Art Centre in 2013 in Brussels and becoming the winner of the European Union special prize at Yango Biennale in Kinshasa in 2014. His work is found in numerous international private collections, as well as part of the collection of the Delegation of the European Union in DRC and Fondation Hirondelle.
