TKM was born in
Élisabethville (modern-day Lubumbashi), in the south of the
Belgian Congo, in 1947. TKM worked within the period of cultural
authenticité in the 1970s. TKM was one of the leading figures of "African
genre painting" which had emerged in the Belgian Congo in the late 1950s and which integrated both European and Congolese styles and techniques. TKM's best-known paintings form part of a series of 101 works commissioned by the German anthropologist
Johannes Fabian to illustrate Congolese history as it appeared in national collective memory. The series was produced between 1974 and 1976 and forms the body of TKM's work and was used as the basis for an academic collaboration between the two. The result,
Remembering the Present: Paintings and popular history in Zaire, was published in 1996. TKM viewed the purpose of the book as presenting the history of his country to a child born in the country. by contrast, Fabian presents it as an anthropological work for Western study. The work also emphasizes TKM's admiration of Patrice Lumumba, particularly in the use of deliberate Christ imagery in the paintings of Lumumba, specifically mirroring
Jesus' wounds after the crucifixion. The parallel is so clear that Fabian names the section "The Passion of Patrice Lumumba," a reference to "The Passion of the Christ." 102 of TKM's paintings were purchased by the
Tropenmuseum, an
ethnographic museum in
Amsterdam, in 2000. ==References==