KING NGABO

Painter · Kigali, Rwanda

King Ngabo

Artist — painting memory, place, and the Rwandan present.

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Biography

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Institutions & projects

About the project

Institution · 2019 — present

Museum Kigali

A permanent house for contemporary Rwandan painting, built around the belief that a nation remembers through its images as much as its archives.

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Studio · 2016 — present

Atelier E500

The working studio and residency where every canvas begins — five hundred square metres of light, pigment, and the young painters who pass through it.

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Project · 2021 — present

Art for Rwanda — Memoria

A long-form project turning private grief and public history into a shared visual language of remembrance and repair.

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Exhibition · Annual

Annuelle Kigali

The city's yearly survey of new work, staged each September — a room for the country's emerging painters to be seen together.

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Artworks

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The River Knows

Acrylic on canvas · 2024

A river seen from above and below at once — the surface calm, the current carrying everything it has ever been asked to hold.

Memoria

Mixed media on linen · 2023

On the work

I paint so that the things a country would rather forget have somewhere to live. Not monuments — rooms. A face, a river, an ordinary afternoon, kept long enough that someone else can stand inside it.

— King Ngabo

Master Classes

All classes

Next — 14 Sep 2026

Composition & Light

Build a picture that holds the eye. Structure, negative space, and the way light gives a canvas its weight.

3-day intensive

18 hours

Intermediate

Class details

Next — 3 Oct 2026

Portraiture

The face as landscape. Proportion, likeness, and the small asymmetries that make a portrait feel alive.

Weekend workshop

12 hours

All levels

Class details

Next — 21 Nov 2026

Memory & Material

Working with mixed media to hold personal and collective memory — layering, burying, and recovering an image.

Masterclass

2 days

Advanced

Class details

Trusted by

Ellen Gallery

Biennale de Kigali

Institut Français

Memoria Fund

Ellen Gallery

Biennale de Kigali

Institut Français

Memoria Fund

Enquiries

Visit the studio, or bring the work to yours.

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