Cianga (she/they) is a Congolese artist based in California, by way of South Africa. A recipient of the Cave Canem + EcoTheo’s Starshine & Clay Fellowship, Cianga creates interdisciplinary work that seeks to decolonize and disrupt language. They are currently an MFA candidate and have received residency and fellowship support from UC Berkeley’s Arts & Research Center, Brooklyn Poets, and Atlantic Center for the Arts. Her work can be found or is forthcoming in Foglifter Journal, Rappahannock Review, EcoTheo Review and elsewhere. They write, draw, compose, perform with the belief of black art as radical joy and critical protest.

Congo, seen from the heavens is a collection of poems that journeys through not often told history from the Congolese and Black diaspora to deliver its warnings, lament, and hopes. From the perspective of a refugee, this book addresses the complex relationships between home and survival while rooting itself in the reminder that we are [our] “ancestor’s best outcome.”

From the heavens, our whole Earth can appear so small. Yet this view also allows us to see ourselves as infinitely precious; that in our tiny stake in the universe, we are worthy of existing in full splendor. Congo, seen through this lens, is more than a bereft, grieving country—it is a testament to survival, a land of dense yearning, prepared to fight.

Cianga Website