Melisa Kayowa is a visual artist and weaver from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, based in Kinshasa. She was awarded the Prince Claus Fund’s 2025 Seed Award along with the S+T+ARTS Afropean Intelligence residency. Her work merges tradition and modernity, using textile art as a medium for memory, emotion, and reflection. She explores absence, loss, and fear through a multidisciplinary approach that combines weaving, embroidery, installation, architecture, writing, video, photography, and modern technologies to examine memory and inner experience.

Her method connects Congolese ancestral practices with contemporary issues, creating a ‘tradimodern’ aesthetic that balances personal and collective identity, tradition and innovation.