CATPC argues that white cube museums have been funded by profits extracted from plantation worker communities. In 2017, they erected their own white cube exhibition space in Lusanga. For CATPC, this White Cube stands for all museums and galleries throughout the world. In 2023, the collective placed their White Cube on trial. The performance-film The Judgement of the White Cube shows this Indigenous trial and features several members of the collective demanding justice for the extraction of wealth to finance museums. In the film, the judge, Mbuku Kimpala, convicts and sentences the White Cube to dedicate its energies for the good of the post-plantation. CATPC hopes their story sparks change and will ripple across the globe.
The Judgement of The White Cube, 2024
Video
SD video, color, sound, english subtitles
9:09 min
Edition of 5 + 2AP
CATPC
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).
- Anna Boghiguian
- Candice Breitz
- Marco A. Castillo
- CATPC
- Alice Creischer
- Chto Delat
- Clegg & Guttmann
- Eugenio Dittborn
- Heinrich Dunst
- Anna Ehrenstein
- León Ferrari
- Peter Friedl
- Sophie Gogl
- Barbara Hammer
- Ramon Haze
- Hiwa K
- Hudinilson Jr.
- Simon Lehner
- Renzo Martens
- Chris Martin
- Frédéric Moser & Philippe Schwinger
- Oswald Oberhuber
- Mario Pfeifer
- Dierk Schmidt
- Santiago Sierra
- Michael E. Smith
- Franz Erhard Walther
- Clemens von Wedemeyer
- Tobias Zielony