Chrystel Mukeba BE, b. 1983
Chrystel Mukeba is a Belgian photographer based in Brussels who works primarily with analogue photography. Her practice explores memory, transmission and identity through intimate narratives in which personal histories intersect with broader collective contexts.
Through portraiture, landscape and fragments of everyday life, she pays particular attention to light, details and ordinary gestures. Her images move through childhood, family relationships and the traces left by time on places and bodies, questioning how memory is constructed, transformed and passed on from one generation to another.
Education
Chrystel Mukeba studied Photography at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Brussels, graduating in 2010.
Solo Exhibitions (selected)
- I’ve Never Seen My Father Cry, FOMU, Antwerp, 2025
- Portraits Style Congo: Heritage and Heresy, Kanal Underground, Brussels, 2023
- Les Instants, Galerie ETE 78, Brussels, 2022
- You Are All That I Remember / Ephemeria, Centre Culturel Jacques Franck, Brussels, 2018
Group Exhibitions (selected)
- A Truly Immense Journey, KANAL–Centre Pompidou, Brussels, 2026
- Reinventing Photography, Hangar Art Center, Brussels, 2026
- OpenFolio #5 – Laureates Exhibition, Institut pour la Photographie, Lille, 2026
- Éclats de Familles, Musée de la Photographie, Charleroi, 2026
- WORK, PhotoBrussels Festival, Centre Culturel Jacques Franck, Brussels, 2026
- I’ve Never Seen My Father Cry, Modern Art Oxford, Oxford, 2025
- I’ve Never Seen My Father Cry, Kranj Foto Fest, Slovenia, 2025
- Hosting, CENTRALE for Contemporary Art, Brussels, 2024
- Panser les paysages post-coloniaux, Rencontres Photographiques de Guyane, CIAP, French Guiana, 2023
- Past & Present, Pinakothek der Moderne / ZIRKA Pavilion 333, Munich, 2023
- Style Congo: Heritage and Heresy, CIVA, Brussels, 2023
- Nôtre – Photographier l’intime, La Châtaigneraie – Centre wallon d’art contemporain, Flémalle, 2022
- Naître aux mondes, Les Rencontres d’Arles, Arles, 2021
- Concerned: Global Images for Global Crisis, International Center of Photography, New York, 2020
Awards & Grants
Chrystel Mukeba was selected for the national photographic commission Reinventing Photography in 2025 and was also a laureate of OpenFolio #5 at the Institut pour la Photographie in Lille. That same year, she took part in the Mentorship Programme at the Centre de la Photographie Genève with Danaé Panchaud and received a grant from the Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles for I’ve Never Seen My Father Cry.
The project was also supported by a FOMU grant in 2024–2025 and a SOFAM grant in 2024. In 2022, she received support through Futur pour la Culture and a production grant from the Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles, following an editorial grant from the institution in 2021.
Earlier distinctions include the Prix Hamesse – Prix Photographie & Entreprise in 2018, selection for the Prix Mentor Session #3 in 2018, the Prix Hamesse – Prix Dr Véronique Trempont in 2017, and a shortlist for FotoFilmic’16 in Vancouver.
Collections
Her work is held in the collections of FOMU – Fotomuseum Antwerpen and KANAL–Centre Pompidou in Brussels.
Her series Portraits Style Congo has recently entered the collection of KANAL–Centre Pompidou and is included in the institution’s opening display.
Publications
- Les Instants, ARP2 Editions, 2022
