Plantations and Museums, 2021

6–channel video

A series of six short documentary films follows CATPC’s Mathieu Kasiama and Ced'art Tamasala as they search for an important sculpture that their community has lost decades ago and that they hope to return to Lusanga. The sculpture was made by the Pende in 1931 in an effort to control the spirit of the Belgian officer Maximilien Balot, who was decapitated in an act of rebellion after committing rapes and other atrocities.

Kasiama and Tamasala travel to the Pende revolt’s battlefield and to the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond, USA, where the Balot sculpture is now held. They talk to experts in the postcolonial discourse, unravel the hidden interconnections between the plantations of the South and the museums of the North, and visit the collector who acquired the sculpture in 1972 and later sold it to the Virginia Museum. Kasiama and Tamasala show up at the museum to demand that the sculpture be given back as a loan, in vain.

6–channel video, color sound,
Ed. of 5 + 2AP
Episode 1 with Antoine Sikitele, 7:02 min
Episode 2 with Zoe Strother, 7:48 min
Episode 3 with Ariella Aisha Azoulay, 7:24 min
Episode 4 with Simon Gikandi, 6:53 min
Episode 5 with Herbert Weiss, 7:53 min
Episode 6 with Richard Woordward, 9:26 min

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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