Yan-Kevin Yango Bapala (1997) is a self-taught filmmaker and digital visual artist based in Antwerp. His passion for cameras began in childhood, inspired by his uncle, a wedding and documentary photographer active in Brussels’ Congolese community. Those early encounters planted the first seeds of a fascination that never left him. In 2020, during the Covid lockdowns, he acquired his first film camera, setting in motion the artistic journey that continues to shape his practice today.

Yan-Kevin’s work is deeply rooted in electronic music culture. Both as a participant and as an observer, he is drawn to faces, spaces, and spontaneous instants where beauty or meaning unexpectedly appears. For him, music and movement are not just themes but healing forces—forms of release that allow him to process trauma and create space for renewal. His images translate these experiences into visual echoes, where rhythm and color become carriers of collective energy.

For Studio UK Editions, he presents two works from his ongoing series at Horst Festival, one of the first places where he discovered electronic music seven years ago. Festivals, for him, are more than just sites of sound and dance: they are carefully crafted environments where art and music amplify one another, and participants immerse themselves in shared experiences.

The first image references the Japanese moon god Tsukuyomi and an illusion technique from the anime Naruto. Just as characters in the story are entranced by the full moon, festivalgoers beneath a glowing red sphere appeared spellbound, caught in a trance intensified by the pulsing soundscape. The second work is more playful: two figures abandon the rhythm of the beat for the timeless “fist pump,” their movement blurred by light and motion into an illusion of control over rhythm itself. Together, these works highlight Yan-Kevin’s fascination with how music, bodies, and energy exchange shape both festival spaces and inner states of release and transformation.