Nsaka Sandrine NGANGA is a digital art director working across 3D fashion design, cultural heritage and material research.

She has more than a decade of international experience in France, the United Kingdom, the United States and the Democratic Republic of Congo, and works primarily in CLO3D, Blender, Unreal Engine and Adobe Substance 3D.

Alongside the MA she lectures in Fashion Design and Communication Technology at Liverpool John Moores University, where she built the digital curriculum for BA Fashion Design, and teaches on the master's programmes at LISAA Mode Paris.

She is the founder of NS Digital Art Ltd and of Institut NSAKA, a digital fashion training institute in Kinshasa.

Project:

KIMA3D: Translating Kuba Raffia: Source, Archive and Global Circulation

Platform name: KIMA3D

“Materials can travel globally while recognition and value return to their source.”
Translating Kuba Raffia began with a simple observation: only one Kuba raffia asset was available across major 3D material libraries, published without a pattern name, maker attribution or consent.

KIMA3D responds by creating a digital research platform and archive documenting ten raffia pieces acquired and recorded in Kinshasa. The project brings together four filmed interviews with a master weaver, curator, 3D material designer and industry product team, exploring how cultural materials are translated and circulated through digital fashion.
Each digital asset restores the identity and knowledge behind the material, recording its pattern name, terms of use and credit to the hands that made it. The project also recovers terminology lost through translation: the material is mbala, derived from the ibole palm, while the garments are Bushongo.

Named after KIMA, the Kikongo word for substance, the platform proposes a more equitable model for digital material circulation, one where materials can travel globally while recognition and value return to their source.