Aimé Mpane remembers when he first saw the old statues. It was 1994, and the Congolese visual artist had just moved to Belgium, which once ruled his country. Growing up in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mpane says he had been taught in school that the Congolese were descended from the Gauls — "that they were our kings." "In our schoolbooks, it was as if the Congolese did not exist without Belgian colonialists," says Mpane, 50. His work ...
A new museum due to open on 21 April in the Congolese forest aims to “repatriate” the white cube space. Built on a former palm oil plantation of the English-Dutch company Unilever, a major sponsor of museums in the UK and the Netherlands, the White Cube is part of the Lusanga International Research Centre for Art and Economic Inequality in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Designed pro-bono by the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA), it is the Dutch firm’s first museum in Africa. ...
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