Instagram story viewer> @kikesaaa> Posts

Kikesa Kimbwala DeRobles-Bwana Cosio

@kikesaaa

2.1K

followers

4380

following

Girl King
soft and soldier-like

POSTS STORIES REELS TAGGED

Download All

By Fading Record and Familiar Motion; notes on home and excerpts of an essay written for Julian Lucas @julian__lucas on the occasion of his solo-exhibition, Happiness Pursued. Paradise Lost. at the Claremont Lewis Museum of Art @claremont_lmoa

From the artist's Exodus and Apt. 31 Series by @kikesaaa

205

22

4 months ago

Christ in the Coal Cellar; excerpts of an essay written for Emmanuel Massillon on the occasion of his solo-exhibition, System Structures, at Bremond Capela. @bremondcapela

Emmanuel Massillon. @massi____
Caretaker, 2026
Taxidermied raccoon and religious figure
15 x 13.4 x 15 in

My notes on a rabid Madonna. by @kikesaaa

258

11

6 months ago

This second time home from Congo I am offered several reminders.

To recognize a place only in its dispossession is to lay flowers at an early grave. This dishonors life, and Congo is spilling over with old and new life. Even the quiet hums with church songs and the smell of salt and fire. Scorched earth is turned over more fertile.

Congo does not have ambitions of the West. It does not aspire to its cousins of Nigeria, South Africa, or Burkina Faso. It sees itself and its debtors without seeking confirmation. It knows the taste of its own instinct, posture, and inflection. It negotiates only with itself. It will have its birthright. This is not a question.

Home is never as far as it looks and Congo is source. You will always feel its steam on your face. (Don’t just ask about its minerals; ask about its crude oil, human export, and peatlands.) What’s due to Congo is holistic, there is not a luxury enjoyed material or otherwise that doesn’t start at its basin. Global powers will bloat and wither, but Africa is shaped like a gun and Congo is the trigger.

(I love and am so loved by my country. The greatest treasure I’m bringing back is a Congolese dictionary in its 4 national languages so I can stay trigger happy in my own tongues) taken in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic Congo by @kikesaaa

273

29

a year ago

Dena Not For Sale, 2025, single-channel video, 9min 33sec

This non-narrative composition arranges disjointed news clippings, family archival footage, and citizen journalism captured before, during, and after the Eaton Fire.
Voiced by the families of Here Lay A Home, this film gives shape to the overwhelm of collaborative media and deciphering personal disruption when navigating the racialized dimensions of disaster capitalism and collective recovery in Altadena, CA.

The full film is on view at the Armory Center for the Arts now through Sept 28th and at the Here Lay A Home website.

Producer: Lauren Williams, Creative Director: Kikesa Kimbwala DeRobles, Video and Sound Editor: Lauren Williams

Footage Courtesy of the Hines Family Archive and the Benn Family Archive by @kikesaaa

225

7

a year ago

Love letters by @kikesaaa

156

6

10 months ago

Softer cells, sounder vocations by @kikesaaa

324

15

9 months ago

Earth Chimney, 2025
Compressed earth blocks, steel frame, chicken wire cloth, metal and earth debris, collection of community offerings
114"x48"x36"

Pulling the image of brick structures left standing on fire scorched land, and archival photos of living rooms kept by the members of Here Lay A Home, the Earth Chimney resurrects the hearth of a family home from the ground on which it lay. It is a domestic ruin that pulses between what was and what endures. Built of individually crafted compressed earth blocks sprinkled with the ash of lost homes, the chimney is also an effective practice in constructing sustainable infrastructure. The material is environmentally renewable, low cost, and inherently fireproof, calling on global traditions of earthen architecture as a solution to the wider climate and housing crisis in LA. The extended hearth becomes an altar at which to lay offering, and a stage for performance that imbues the object with new life.

Thank you to so many visitors who left their own relics of home and helped us practice the collective patchworking necessary to rebuild.

This is the second altar in the Altadena Altarvention series, introduced in February 2025, and is presented in collaboration with Build With Earth, Organica Creations @plinthbuildco, and the Office for Collective Architecture @oca.arch

Installation view of Collective in Residence: Here Lay A Home at the Armory Center for the Arts, 2025. Courtesy of Armory Center for the Arts. Photo: Chris Young, CC YOUNG STUDIO @ccyoungstudio and Kennedy Arnette @kennyoubelieve by @kikesaaa

257

15

a year ago

Sweet as stone
Child; performed as a nursery rhyme, translated from English to Kikongo, 2026
Recovered pants, Brass armature, Stone
7.5" x 6.5" x 11", 19 x 16.5 x 28 cm

kupola na makala/kudipa ntoto/nene kibende diboko/ilungi mosi ve na mukuwa/butonfo ya kubukana díso telefone/nda kulosa ya kufwa kutemúka diaka/kufuta kutindila/kufwa kusadila/kututa kututa mama/kupasula kupasula mwana/wet ash/dry land/fat copper hand/face without bone/brain broke eye phone/does not compute/is incompatible/long-range device/drop dead, blink twice/deep-fake infallible/ income-export/off-switch extort/blick blick the mother/glitch glitch the child taken in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic Congo by @kikesaaa

115

12

8 months ago

Life_Death_Life Mother (Plaster cast series) 2025, Plaster, embedded debris, inkjet transfer, original documentary photo, 30”x 24”

Currently on view in Here Lay A Home, at the Armory Center for the Arts

Installation view of Collective in Residence: Here Lay A Home at Armory Center for the Arts, 2025. Courtesy of Armory Center for the Arts. Photo: Chris Young, CC YOUNG STUDIO @ccyoungstudio by @kikesaaa

134

6

a year ago

Material Echoes (Plaster cast series ft Virgen de Guadalupe, Life/Death/Life Mother), 2025

Plaster, embedded debris, inkjet transfer, original documentary photo

Cast from the recovered objects of families in Altadena, these plaster assemblages impress photo documentation on the forms of personal monuments. The Virgen de Guadalupe icon, a surviving object observed on the grounds of many lost and remaining homes in Altadena following the Eaton Fire, is an interpretation of the Catholic Virgin Mary and the Aztec Earth goddess Tonantzín adopted by Mexican and Chicano culture. She is a maternal force of protection, creation, and indigenous reclamation, widely referenced in California imagery and domestic mythology.

Each object in this series is cast in plaster or plaster gauze, an inherently fire resistant constructing material, offering a protective body to the debris it encases.

Currently on view in Here Lay A Home, at the Armory Center for the Arts

Installation view of Collective in Residence: Here Lay A Home at Armory Center for the Arts, 2025. Courtesy of Armory Center for the Arts. Photo: Chris Young, CC YOUNG STUDIO. @ccyoungstudio taken in Armory Center for the Arts by @kikesaaa

146

6

a year ago

Here Lay A Home, 2025, the remains of 105 W. Poppyfields Drive, Altadena, CA

A site-specific installation and public art performance of remembrance, offering, and renewal. An altar to home.

Thank you @herelayahome family 🏠♥️🍋

@ricardo_the_educator
@cilangee
@davidhines124
@lauuren.williams
@organicsnakeoil
@itstrusound
@perennialmemorylab
@bigpinkthoughts
@meemstheestallion
@forthefuture.family
@kiese.kimbwala
@tooheaded taken in Santa Monica Airport by @kikesaaa

232

8

2 years ago

Bent ribs, Flaked skin, Metal and twine on jute, 105 W. Poppyfields Drive, 108”x 60”

In a process that references traditions of herb bundling for ritual burning, I tended to the dismembered rods of a burnt bedframe as living material, using wrapping as a healing device to mend injured limbs. The blacked, browned, and blued patina is indicative of the material’s incomplete decomposition; it is not dead but dying. Metal fragments are bundled then reassembled as a draped composition that through human intervention is both laid to rest and willed to suspension.

Currently on view in Here Lay A Home, at the Armory Center for the Arts @herelayahome

Installation view of Collective in Residence: Here Lay A Home at Armory Center for the Arts, 2025. Courtesy of Armory Center for the Arts. Photo: Chris Young, CC YOUNG STUDIO @ccyoungstudio @armoryarts by @kikesaaa

178

9

a year ago