Cercle d’Art des Travailleurs de Plantation Congolaise or in brief CATPC (Congolese Plantation Workers’ Art League) is a collective that currently comprises of twenty members. The membership is not static: besides the group of founding members, there is a group of recent members as well as interns.
Below is a list of current members and trainees:
Djonga Bismar, Alphonse Bukumba, Irène Kanga, Muyaka Kapasa, Matthieu Kasiama, Jean Kawata, Huguette Kilembi, Mbuku
Kimpala, Athanas Kindendi, Felicien Kisiata, Charles Leba, Philomène Lembusa, Richard Leta, Jérémie Mabiala, Plamedi Makongote, Blaise Mandefu, Daniel Manenga, Mira Meya, Emery
Muhamba, Tantine Mukundu, Olele Mulela, Daniel Muvunzi, Alvers Tamasala, Ced’art Tamasala. CATPC is presided by René Ngongo.
CATPC makes art to generate global awareness about the historic and present-day position of plantation workers. With their art they generate the means necessary to turn depleted plantations back into forests for the benefit of the community, providing local food security and, increasing biodiversity and mitigating global climate
change. Art is the driver leading to autonomous and resilient communities
and to the restoration of the sacred forest.
Post-PlantationCATPC are based in Lusanga, formerly called Leverville. This village deep in Congo was once the capital of an immense empire of palm oil that was so valuable to Lever Brothers (today Unilever). Unilever eradicated the forests, and enslaved entire communities on the plantations in Lusanga and elsewhere. When after 100 years of extraction, the land was fully exhausted, and no longer of use, Unilever sold it off.
With the income from their art, CATPC re-appropriates this once confiscated land, and develops a new form: the Post Plantation: community-owned, inclusive, multi-species food gardens and forests.
Bringing back biodiversity, restoring food security and mitigating climate change, through the regeneration of forests: these are the keys to decolonizing the plantations.
White CubeThe plantation system not only allowed for the accumulation of vast wealth but also for the financing and construction of white cube museums across Europe. The white cube is indebted to the plantations. It has benefitted from forced labor that turned many into enslaved people, it is culpable for and complicit in the cruelty of a murderous system of extraction that has exhausted and keeps on exhausting these lands. While white cubes worldwide are now decolonizing, no white cube can claim to decolonize as long as the plantations are not; hence the need for the return of a white cube to a plantation that has financed it.
In 2017, on their reclaimed land, CATPC built a white cube: the first to be constructed on plantation soil, intended to restore agency, capital, and visibility to plantation communities. From there, CATPC presents a program that not merely offers the public a beautiful spectacle, but it ensures that the utmost positive impact is made – both material (economic) and immaterial (historical memory) – on exhausted plantations like the one in Lusanga.
Solo exhibitions:
2022
BALOT, KOW Berlin (solo exhibition with Renzo Martens), DE
2021
FORCED LOVE, KOW Berlin, DE
2019
CATPC – the artists from the plantation. A Portrait by Baloji, MAMA, Albury, Australia (solo exhibition with Baloji), AU
2018
Cercle d’Art des Travailleurs de Plantation Congolaise, NT Gent, Ghent, BE
2017
Cercle d’Art des Travailleurs de Plantation Congolaise (Congolese Plantation Workers Art League), SculptureCenter, New York, US
The Armory Show (Focus selection), Piers 92 & 94, New York, US
2016
Cercle d’Art des Travailleurs de Plantation Congolaise (CATPC), Middlesbrough, Institute of Modern Art, UK
2015
On the Institute for Human Activities, Bergkerk, Deventer
A New Settlement, Galerie Fons Welters, Amsterdam, NL
A Lucky Day, KOW, Berlin, DE
Not-for-profit spaces, Art Brussels, Art Brussels, Brussel, BE
IHA pop-up store, V2_ Institute for Unstable Media, Rotterdam, NL
Group exhibitions:
2024
Biennale di Venezia (in collaboration with Renzo Martens and Hicham Khalidi), Dutch Pavillion, Venice, IT
2023
Fruits of Labour, Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens, Deurle, BE
Kunsthal Charlottenborg Biennale 2023, Copenhagen, DK
Someone Is Getting Rich, Tropenmuseum, Amsterdam, NL
Economics the Blockbuster – It’s not Business as Usual, The Whitworth, Manchester, UK
Memory is an Editing Station, 22nd Biennial Sesc_Videobrasil, São Paulo, BR
The Way We Are 4.0, Weserburg Museum for Modern Art, Bremen, DE
Monomaterial, Kunstsaele, Berlin, DE
2022
Remember Me: Liberated Bodies, Charged Objects, Lagos Photo Festival, Lagos, NG
Ruins and Empires, Sofia Art Projects II, Sofia, BG
The Way We Are 4.0, Weserburg Museum for Modern Art, Bremen, DE
Lubumbashi 7th Biennale: Toxicity, Lubumbashi, DRC
Dream City Festival, L’Art Rue, Tunis, TN
Dig Where You Stand, SCCA Tamale, Tamale, GH
Performance with Ced’art Tamasala and Matthieu Kasiama (CATPC), New Rural Agenda Summit, documenta fifteen, Kassel, DE
Time is Going – Archive and Future Memories, off-program Dak’art Biennale, Dakar, SN
PARADYS, Arcadia, Oranjewoud, NL
Hurting and Healing: Let’s Imagine a Different Heritage, Tensta konsthall, Stockholm, SE
MADE IN X, Kunsthal Extra City, Antwerp, BE
2021
Staple: What’s on your plate?, Hayy Jameel, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, SA
Vrijdenkers: Van Spinoza tot nu, Amsterdam Museum, NL
2020
Irene Kanga, Forced Love, EYE Filmmuseum Amsterdam, NL
MONOCULTURE | A Recent History, M HKA, Antwerp, BE
Risquons-Tout, WIELS, Vorst, BE
Out of the Dark II, KOW Berlin, DE
Errata, Fundació Antoni Tàpies, ES
2019
KOW (2.1 L1), Art Basel, Switzerland, CH
Catastrophe and the Power of Art, Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, JP
2018
The Way Things Run, Part II: Cargo, PS120, Berlin, DE
#whatif, Kunsthal Charlottenburg, Copenhagen, DK
SUPERPOSITION: Equilibrium & Engagement, 21st Biennale of Sydney, AU
The Land We Live In – The Land We Left Behind, Hauser & Wirth, Somerset, UK
2017
Transaktionen — Über Den Wert Künstlerischer Arbeit, Haus am Lützowplatz, Berlin, DE
Sticky Business, Stedelijk Museum Schiedam, Schiedam, NL
2016
Bread and Roses, Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw, PL
2015
Produktion, Galerie nächst St. Stephan Rosemarie Schwarzwälder, Vienna, AT
Art Rotterdam, Galerie Fons Welters, Van Nellefabriek, Rotterdam, NL
Confessions of the Imperfect 1848-1989-Today, Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, NL
Artes Mundi 6, National Museum of Art, Cardiff, UK
