Joël Mamboka: The Artist Who Paints With Fabric

Art

A boy who once helped his father paint murals in Kinshasa now makes paintings out of fabric and paint in Cape Town.

Author

Tom Clark

Photography

Joël Mamboka / Micha Weinberger

Joël Mamboka paints with paint, old fabric, and bits of vintage wallpaper. His portraits are full of colour and pattern, and they never look too serious. I saw a few of his paintings in a small gallery on Long Street, and they made me smile before I even looked at the price tag.

Mamboka lives in Cape Town now, but he grew up in Kinshasa, in the Democratic Republic of Congo. His dad used to take him along to paint murals, and Mamboka would climb up and help out long before he was tall enough to reach the top on his own. He has been building pictures out of layers ever since.

Mamboka studied at the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Kinshasa and finished his degree in 2013. He then moved to Cape Town to keep learning and building his career. His first big show in South Africa came in 2019, when he joined the Emerging Artist Programme at Zeitz MOCAA. After that came a run of solo shows at Youngblood Gallery, including Monzele Beauty in 2022 and La Sapologie in 2023. That last one was named after the sapeurs, the well dressed men of Kinshasa who take a lot of pride in how they look and dress. Mamboka grew up watching them, and you can see it in his portraits, even when the fabric comes from a market stall instead of a tailor.

He is now represented by WORLDART on Long Street, where his 2025 solo show The Illusion of Ease filled the gallery with faces made from patchwork and paint. That same year he had another solo show, Kizoba Zoba, at Grande Provence Gallery in Franschhoek.

What I like about visiting artists like Mamboka is that there is no fuss involved. You get an open studio, a half finished canvas, and someone happy to tell you why he picked a certain scrap of fabric for a collar. He also works part time as a chef at a Cape Town restaurant, which might explain his great taste in everything that he does.

We take guests to studios like this on our Creative Cape Town Tour. We drive around the city in our old Land Rover Defender and stop in at artists' studios and galleries, where you can watch someone paint and ask them questions directly. It usually beats a normal gallery visit, since you also get the story behind the work, not just the work itself.

If you want to spend a day in Cape Town meeting artists like Joël Mamboka instead of just walking past their work, enquire and we will help you plan it.

If you want to spend a day in Cape Town meeting artists like Joël Mamboka instead of just walking past their work, enquire and we will help you plan it.