THE BALOT NFT, 2022

The Balot NFT puts digital ownership of culture back into the hands of the many and helps buy back land once stolen. In a radical new model of restitution, NFT technology becomes a tool for decolonization.

For centuries people on plantations in Congo and elsewhere have been deprived of their culture and forced into unpaid labor, supporting wealth and art in the global north. In this case of digital restitution, the Congolese Plantation Workers Art League (CATPC) claims their heritage using the magic powers of NFTs. The Balot sculpture was carved in 1931, during a Pende uprising against atrocities carried out by the Unilever plantation system and Belgian colonial agents. The sculpture depicts the angry spirit of beheaded Belgian officer Maximilien Balot. It was made to control Balot’s spirit and make him work for the Pende people.

Today, the sculpture is held in the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (VMFA) in Richmond. Loan requests by CATPC have thus far been futile. With the Balot NFT, CATPC claims back what is theirs: not just art, but land. CATPC has publicly called back the powers of the Balot sculpture by minting it as NFT. With its sales, CATPC buys back land in one of the most impoverished areas of the world, replants the forest and reintroduces biodiversity.

Buyers get a digital rendering of the Balot sculpture hovering over a fragment of a drawing by CATPC member Ced'art Tamasala. The drawing maps out global value flows of capital, commodities and cultural exploitation. It exhibits how the Balot sculpture was carved to resist these unequal power relations and its disastrous consequences for the community.

The drawing has been divided in 306 pieces, over each of which the digital Balot hovers. With each NFT sold, CATPC can buy back one hectare of land.

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CATPC

**Dutch Pavillion at the Venice Biennial 2024: The International Celebration of Blasphemy and the Sacred, 2024**

**The Judgement of The White Cube, 2024**

**Résistant déporté et incarcéré, 2022**

**Plantation Monoculture, 2022 by Athanas Kindendie**

**Drawings, 2022 by Matthieu Kilapi Kasiama**

**Drawings, 2016–ongoing by Ced’art Tamasala**

Biography

CATPC – Cercle d’art des travailleurs de plantation congolaise – is an art cooperative of plantation workers based in Lusanga, D.R.Congo. CATPC was founded in 2014 with renowned environmental activist René Ngongo. Over the past decade, they have reconnected to a history of artistic resistance against the plantation system and developed a practice of getting hundreds of acres of exhausted plantation land with the proceeds of their art. On this land they bring back the forests that were cut down by the plantation companies and develop their ecological and inclusive food garden the “Post-Plantation” with the proceeds of their art.

At the heart of that reclaimed land, they built a museum, the White Cube Lusanga. In 2024, they represented the Netherlands at the Venice Biennale, presenting a dual exhibition in Venice and Lusanga. They also secured the temporary return of the ancestral sculpture Balot to Lusanga for the duration of the Biennale – a powerful act of reconnection between the community and its history of resistance against the plantation system.

Recent solo exhibitions include SculptureCenter (New York, 2017), the Dutch pavilion at the 60th Venice Biennale (2024), and the Van Abbemuseum (Einhoven, 2024). Other exhibitions include Sydney Biennale (2017), Dig Where You Stand (Ghana, 2022), Diriyah Contemporary Art Biennale (2024).

Full Biography

Exhibitions at KOW