CATPC - filmprogramma | Why Plantations Matter

In the six-part documentary series Plantations and Museums (2021), CATPC members Matthieu Kasiama and Ced'art Tamasala travel to the battleground of the Pende rebellion and to the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (VMFA), the museum that holds a long-lost Congolese sculpture in the United States. They interview key thinkers on this sculpture and postcolonial discourse, such as Ariella Aïsha Azoulay (Brown University) and Simon Gikandi (Princeton University). The conversations unravel the hidden relations between plantations in the South (from where profits were extracted to build museums) and the museums in the North (where art from the plantations is held and academic scholarship is funded). The series leads up to the VMFA, where Kasiama and Tamasala make a claim for the return of the sculpture to Lusanga, DRC.

Earlier this year, a temporary loan of the Balot sculpture was secured as part of the Dutch entry to the Venice Biennale. The sculpture is on display at CATPC's museum on the plantation, the White Cube, and simultaneously shown via a livestream in the Dutch pavilion in Venice until November 2024. Three members of CATPC, Mbuku Kimpala, Ced’art Tamasala, and Matthieu Kasiama, are at Noorderzon to talk about their work.

CATPC – ‘Cercle d’Art des Travailleurs de Plantation Congolaise’ or ‘Congolese Plantation Workers Art League’ in full  – is an art cooperative of plantation workers from Lusanga, Democratic Republic of Congo. The organization was founded in collaboration with renowned environmental activist René Ngongo in 2014. With the proceeds from their art, CATPC aims to secure hundreds of hectares of former plantation land for future generations. In the middle of this land, they have built a museum: the White Cube.