David Shongo is a Congolese composer and visual artist. He studied networks and telecommunications at the Protestant University of Lubumbashi. He received a scholarship from the University of Nottingham for training in photographic analysis with the Yolé!Africa cultural center and was a scholarship holder from the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) for the Himmelheber project.
His practice addresses both sound and visual dimensions. He combines music, sound, video and archival and contemporary photography, creating trans-dimensional and cross-cutting works that deal with the complexity of memory and space of his country, the Congo, issues related to the intervention of technology in our societies and the resulting socio-cultural, economic and ecological issues. He uses archives as a device for spatializing memories rather than as an element of historical chronology. His work also explores the symmetrical possibilities that sound and image can have as movements and the poetic charge that each of these movements can carry on the other.
His work has been presented at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, the Rietberg Museum in Zurich, the Locarno Film Festival, the Lubumbashi Biennale 2019, the Congo International Film Festival, Congo in Harlem in New York, in Pennsylvania, and several other art venues. It is part of the "Piano Day 2022" playlist produced by the Berlin label Leiter.