Frank Mukunday and Tétshim: Machini

Frank Mukunday and Tétshim bring their animated short Machini to The Box at the Wexner Center for the Arts, with screenings running from November 1 through December 31. It's a small film with a heavy subject, and it's free for all audiences.

Machini is a stop-motion piece made by two self-taught artists using chalk drawings, stones, dust, and discarded industrial materials. It's set across the industrial landscapes of southern Democratic Republic of the Congo, and it looks at how mining copper, cobalt, and lithium reshapes the environment and daily life. The film treats pollution as both an ecological condition and a lived experience, and the materials they used to make it—the dust and the industrial scrap—feel like they come straight from the ground the film is about.

Mukunday and Tétshim have been working together since 2010, when they cofounded Crayon de cuivre, where they develop independent stop-motion animated films. Mukunday is a filmmaker and animator based in Lubumbashi; Tétshim is an illustrator, cartoonist, and animator born in Kinshasa. Machini has picked up several international awards along the way, including Best Animation Film and Best Film on Social Change at the Lake International PanAfrican Film Festival (LIPFF) 2020, the Prix René Laloux at Angoulême, and the Grand Prix at the StopTrick International Film Festival. The film was produced by Twenty Nine Studio & Production, a Brussels-based company founded by Sammy Baloji.

The screenings run daily from 10 AM to 6 PM, with Sunday hours from 10 AM to 4 PM, so you can drop in whenever fits your schedule. The presentation connects to Sammy Baloji's exhibition at the Wexner Center, which stays on view through February 14, 2027.