The multimedia exhibition "Populäre Bilder" displays works by a total of ten artists from Kinshasa, Lubumbashi and the Congolese diaspora. In addition to Barly Baruti, Asimba Bathy, Thembo Kash, Al'Mata, Papa Mfumu'eto 1er, Rocky Prod, Santa Kakese, Judith Kaluaji, Yann Kumbozi and Tétshim, the art critic Jean Kamba and the curator duo Mukenge/Schellhammer will be guests in Erlangen to finally realise this project, which was initiated in 2020, at the International Comic Salon.

Up to now, Congolese art in general and especially the aspect of the popular in painting and comics has predominantly been considered from a sociological and ethnological point of view in Europe. "African visual art is often underestimated and seen as an artefact without artistic value because it does not fit into the classification systems of Western art." (Jean Kamba). The long-term project "Populäre Bilder" of the Erlangen International Comic Salon therefore attempts to promote a discourse that combines attributes such as artistic intention, material, pictorial means and narratives as well as other aspects of artistic creation. Therefore, the focus is on individual diversity, on different points of view as well as on the artistic aspect of comics in general.

The title "Populäre Bilder" refers to graphic productions that aim to make social discourses accessible to a broad audience and are accordingly popular in orientation. The themes reflect contemporary realities, force and reflect society and question behavioural patterns, traditional role distributions and political actions. The drawings serve as communication media that initiate social processes and at the same time collect stories and document historical events.

In the Erlangen exhibition, the aesthetic relationship between contemporary visual art and contemporary comics in the Democratic Republic of Congo is established as well as their intersections. In this way, the disparity of value attributions in the art system will be questioned, as will the interpretive power of different social systems. Between the poles of the individual and the collective, the Erlangen International Comic Salon will show original drawings by ten artists of different generations, historical and current comic albums, paintings, videos, reports, portraits of artists, theoretical analyses and excerpts from the blog popularimages.org, which, under the editorship of the Erlangen cultural scientist Stefan Becker, has already facilitated an artistic-cultural exchange as a digital platform since 2020.