Daniel Sixte Kakinda: “I talked directly to the city [and] the city addressed itself to me”

Daniel Sixte Kakinda is a self-taught artist from Lubumbashi, DR Congo. He collaborated with South African dramaturge Lindiwe Matshikiza on her film ‘One Take Grace’ in 2015, and received ANT Mobility funding in 2017 for a residency in Johannesburg to develop his animated graphic novel titled ‘My Island called Ekhaya’. For several years Sixte has led comic workshops with WAZA Art Centre for young comic writers in Lubumbashi. In 2017 Sixte received a scholarship from the Japanese government to further his studies at the Tokyo University of the Arts, where he is currently based. 

Receiving the grant allowed me to make a big jump in artistic creation. The suburb of Yeoville in Johannesburg is a space that immediately attracted me because of its history. From its beginnings to its current configuration, Yeoville can give a certain image of the future of cities under the influence of globalisation. Telling this story was not an easy task. As not all the contacts responded to my interview requests, I talked directly to the city. Or let’s say the city addressed itself to me. This had a profound impact on the structuring of my work, a structure that I modified several times until I finally got to something completely new. I managed to develop a new method for telling a story, for telling a city, for writing a graphic novel. This work is still in progress and should be normally ready by the end of 2022.

Artists Lindiwe Matshikiza and Nicholas Pule Welch were instrumental in guiding me in Yeoville. This stay in Yeoville was exciting and I wish to develop another project possibly with drawing and performance in Hillbrow in Johannesburg in the future…