Land and Liberation: Congolese Plantation Workers’ Art Circle (CATPC)
There is a fight going on in the Kwilu basin. It’s CATPC’s struggle to reactivate the commons and liberate itself from the systemic violence that leads the living astray. It’s happening near the village of Kingangu, a former “Lever Brothers” plantation workers’ camp, a vestige of the colonial plantationocene in the town of Lusanga – formerly Leverville – in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
CATPC emerged from an intellectual and artistic commitment that challenged the old mechanistic paradigms of the industrial revolution. In the second half of the 19th century, colonial conquests played a key role in accelerating industrial development in Africa and elsewhere. The resources and vital forces of indigenous populations were exploited in the name of a civilizing mission that aimed for a Eurocentric vision of progress. In reality, populations were subjected to coercive recruitment procedures leading to forced labor, while their land was monopolized and village agriculture was blocked. Entire villages were submitted to systemic fierce authoritarian control that enabled colonial companies to maximize their profits.
CATPC members are direct descendants of workers on the first colonial plantations of the British company Lever Brothers, founded in 1885. In 1911, Lever Brothers acquired major concessions in central Congo, including the natural palm groves of Lusanga, for massive palm oil production. During the occupation of these lands, the town of Lusanga was renamed Leverville. The workforce ensured high profitability until the factories closed due to falling palm yields, increasing competition from other foreign territories, and the confiscation of foreign companies under President Mobutu. Lever Brothers, a soap manufacturer, grew into the multinational Unilever, a giant in the food and cosmetics sector. These giants continue to benefit from the African market, to which they sell their manufactured products to this day.
Challenging global art
Today, CATPC comprises 24 artists, men and women of all ages. Every year, the collective welcomes new members, who enrich the local and international influence of this peasant community. CATPC’s founding members include: the group’s president René Ngongo, a prominent Congolese environmental activist and ardent defender of local community rights and environmental preservation; a dozen artists aspiring to a paradigm shift in this post-colonial context; and three Kinshasa-based artist-teachers, advocates of a free school where everyone is both learner and teacher.
These individuals accompanied the artist-planters (as the members call themselves) of CATPC in establishing a self-managed workspace for research and artwork, which merges art practices, ecology and reparation of colonial injustices, focused on building an equitable and inclusive future. Today, it’s a permanent workspace for making art. Inside, the debate relentlessly questions “global art”, the phenomenon of complex entanglements between cultures, economies and institutions in the context of globalization. It examines how the art market, biennials and international exhibitions shape the production and distribution of art.
Delving into the geopolitical realities of this global art, CATPC was forced to challenge Unilever, which contributed financially to popularizing the concept of the “white cube” – the dominant model of the Western art gallery. By investing in art galleries that follow this model, the former colonial company has impacted the way art is presented and perceived. The white cube, characterized by uniform white walls, controlled lighting and space dedicated to a contemplative experience of art, is often completely out of touch with the realities of the art production or the socio-economic issues associated with it.
CATPC is supported by the Dutch filmmaker Renzo Martens, known for his hard-hitting documentary Enjoy Poverty, as well as for his Human Activities foundation, headed by personalities from various countries including on the African continent. Renzo Martens works with CATPC to highlight the economic dynamics of the art world in relation to inequalities.
A sculpture that speaks to revive the forest
In 2017, Martens invited Rem Koolhaas’s architecture studio, OMA, to design a White Cube that would repatriate the iconic gallery space to the land of Lusanga as a museum. Thanks to profits made from cheap labor, the colonial plantations of the Lever Brothers, who were themselves art collectors, contributed to the quintessential ideology of the “white cube”. Going back to the source of its funding in order to reappropriate these energies reverses the stakes, opening up new perspectives for CATPC.
Currently, the Lusanga White Cube is exhibiting the returned Balot sculpture of a colonial agent originally created by a Pende artist from Kwilu. This sculpture crystalizes the abuses of power by Belgian colonizers that triggered the Pende Revolt of 1931. Balot left the Congo in 1972 to be later sold to the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in the United States, which agreed to lend the sculpture to the residents of Lusanga. Now, the local community finally has access to an important artifact of its history. Funds from the sale of an exact digital reproduction of the Balot sculpture as a non-fungible token (NFT) help CATPC to buy back its lands, replant the forest to ensure its self-sufficiency and food security in the long term.
Since 2014, the artist-planters have created a large number of sculptures using local clay, which are then 3D-scanned and reproduced using cacao from Africa, mostly exported to Europe by foreign companies. Cacao, highly prized in the West, transfers its familiar gourmet pleasure to the artworks, but it’s the critical and visionary thoughts of the artist-planters that give the sculptures their distinctive meaning and power. This added value criticizes the alienating mechanisms of the plantationocene.
CATPC uses revenue generated by its sculptures and other art activities to partially self-fund a community post-plantation that practices a polyculture of fruit trees and shrubbery to restore lands that have been impoverished by the colonial practice of monoculture for decades. According to the members: “The force that emanates from the heart to the brain is the same force that pushes the sap of the roots out through the leaves of the trees, it’s the invisible force that animates the living. Our collective finds its inspiration and its determination in the power of life of our sacred forests. We call this power Luyalu.”
The sometimes traumatic transgenerational stories and experiences that these sculptures evoke are intimately linked to the violation of human rights during this dark period of history. They also represent the “echology”(*) of the persisting role of traditional sculptures as ritual objects that ensure the continuity of community life in all its social, cultural and spiritual aspects. The allegorical, ancestral and/or futuristic figures in CATPC’s works embody this ability to connect nature and culture, paths and voices that are essential to understanding a world of pluralities. From the tropical forests of the DRC, also known as the second lung of the planet, these figures inform us of a holistic dimension where every aspect of life is interconnected, respecting natural cycles, preserving biodiversity by willingly reactivating collective memories in order to project ourselves into a more flourishing future.
CATPC pursues a number of distinct activities ranging from art to agroforestry. All practice a form of rural living history theater, the most significant of which is “The White Cube Judgment”. As spokespersons for the community, Cedart Tamasala (vice-president of CATPC), Matthieu Kilapi, Mbuku Kimpala and Jean Kawata regularly participate in conferences and round tables worldwide. They explain: “As a collective with the opportunity to exhibit our art in museums around the world, we are aware that other communities, living in situations similar to ours, do not have access to the same privilege. Unlike us, they cannot express their ideas, share them and honor their ancestors, or reclaim their land through the power of selling our art. This privilege will remain abject until it can touch and inspire other communities to reconnect with their environment as we do with our lands.”
Three years ago, the artist-planters inaugurated a children’s activity center designed to share knowledge in local languages. Workshops for women around art initiation and polyculture on the post-plantation were initiated this year, with 42 participants.
CATPC members have just been awarded the Grand Prize at S+T+ARTS Africa 2024. And remarkably, this year CATPC occupies the Netherlands Pavilion at the 60th Venice Biennale, inaugurating ten years of active ecological resilience and resistance to extractivist and destructive paradigms, guided by the preservation of ancestral knowledge, self-determination and respect for natural balances.
(*) This concept is mentioned by Séverine Kodjo-Grandvaux, Devenir vivants, Éditions Philippe Rey, Paris, 2021.
This article was first published in the special “Soil Assembly” issue of The Laboratory Planet N°6 – supported by the Rewilding Cultures programme co-funded by the European Union
CATPC and Human Activities websites