Close

    Cercle d'Art des Travailleurs de Plantation Congolaise
    2017

    The Cercle d'Art des Travailleurs de Plantation Congolaise (CATPC) is an art collective founded in 2014 in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. First molded from clay and then cast in chocolate, CATPC's sculptures are made collaboratively and their materials refer back to and overwrite the exploitative economics of global trade. So far plantation labor has funded the art world; here art funds the emergence of a new type of post-plantation. The CATPC reinvests profits from sales of these artworks in self-owned agricultural production throughout Congo, provoking questions about the division between those who should work on plantations and those who are allowed to reflect on this.

    Plantation workers Djonga Bismar, Matthieu Kilapi Kasiama, Cedrick Tamasala, Mbuku Kimpala, Mananga Kibuila, Jérémie Mabiala, Emery Mohamba, and Thomas Leba, ecologist René Ngongo, and the Kinshasa-based artists Michel Ekeba, Eléonore Hellio, and Mega Mingiedi are the CATPC's leading personalities. In collaboration with their sister organization the Institute for Human Activities (IHA), founded by Dutch artist Renzo Martens and active in the Congo since 2012, CATPC is currently building the Lusanga International Research Center for Art and Economic Inequality (LIRCAEI) on a former Unilever plantation in Lusanga, Democratic Republic of the Congo.

    Catalog contributors: Ruba Katrib, René Ngongo, and Renzo Martens,

    Download PDF Purchase