Lio-Bravo Bumbakini
About the Artist:
My name is Lio-Bravo Bumbakini is an artist who paints in swaths of vibrant folkloric imagery including abstracted storytelling often based on Biophilia-or humanity's innate connection to nature. His works consist of paintings, drawings, large-scale murals, photography, short film, mixed media and performative installations. based In Boulder and Louisville, Colorado between 2011-2022, and living in Louisville throughout 2025, Superior is a town I've spent a lot of time in as its grown right before my eyes.
Lio was born in the 1990's in Brussels, Belgium to Congolese immigrants eager to start anew in Europe. At the time - his mother Niangi Batulukisi, was an art scholar, granted a scholarship to pursue her doctorate in African art history and anthropology in Belgium; his father, Jean Bumbakini, a political activist and organizer was an an outspoken opponent of the dictatorship regimes plaguing the DRC and as a result ended up in France seeking asylum. At the age of 8, Lio and his family embarked on their journey to America.
Even before this pivotal move, Lio's creative journey had already begun. As a child, he spent countless hours in museum archives, collectors' basements, and gallery showrooms, places his mother frequented due to her academic pursuits. With babysitters scarce and childcare costly, Lio would pass the time sketching the masks and statues in his vicinity or imagining vibrant worlds of his own—colorful worlds in which he reinterpreted the world around him depicting it through his feelings and own lense.
Today, Lio's work speaks to the clashes of humanity and nature, cultural and individual identities, It speaks to a “new indigenous reality”, a budding spirituality that intertwines the natural world with the metaphysical drawing heavily on ideas of biophilia or how nature can help communicate deep messages in a poetic, profound, manner.
