BRUSSELS.- Congolese popular painting is inextricably linked to daily life in the Democratic Republic of Congo. It bears the stamp of the collective memory, as illustrated by the exhibition ‘Congo Art Works. Popular Painting’. The exhibition presents a selection of portraits, landscapes and allegorical paintings as well as canvases inspired by urban and historical themes. These works were produced between 1968 and 2012. Humour is present even when the subject is serious: the paintings encourage a critical reflection on religion, politics and social issues. A selection of historical objects, archival photographs, drawings and records broaden the perspective by establishing links with other, older Congolese art forms. A unique insight.

Congo Art Works. Popular Painting, an exhibition of the Royal Museum for Central Africa (RMCA), in collaboration with the Centre for Fine Arts Brussels, brings together 82 paintings as well as archives and objects from the Bogumil Jewsiewicki collection and the Museum’s own collections. Featured artists include Chéri Chérin, Chéri Benga, Chéri Samba, Maître syms, Shula, albert Lubaki, Tinda Lwimba, Pili Pili Mulangoy and Djilatendo.

The primary importance of popular painting resides in the imagery it conveys. The themes addressed in the paintings give insight into the preoccupations of the Congolese people in the past forty years: daily life, the political and economic situation, gender relations, the Congolese “atmosphere”, living together. If at first glance visitors see popular painting as colourful and full of humour, in reality the message emerging is a serious one.

The title of the exhibition, Congo Art Works, takes this reality into consideration. Painters paint to earn a living, most often through commissioned works. Painting also “works”, creating discussions and provoking debates.

For the curators, Bambi Ceuppens and Sammy Baloji, this exhibition is also an attempt to “decolonise” the museum which is often presented as the very last colonial museum. For the very first time in the history of the museum, these paintings, acquired in 2013, will be exhibited alongside older collections from the museum in Tervuren in order to demonstrate that what we refer to as “colonial”, “traditional”, “ethnographic”, “modern”, or “contemporary” all belongs to the same art history; and that popular painting is part of a long tradition of drawing in DRC, preceding colonization. The exhibition invites the public to look at the RMCA collections from a different perspective and gives researchers ideas for new areas of analysis.

THE BOGUMIL COLLECTION JEWSIEWICKI
The works presented in Congo Art Works. Popular Painting were collected between 1968 and 2012 by Professor Bogumil Jewsiewicki and his Congolese colleagues in fifteen towns of the DRC. A lot of them are works by famous Congolese painters, bought directly from the artists or from private individuals. The collection is made up of 1,994 paintings and drawings as well as studio photographs, life stories, interviews with artists and articles. The RMCA acquired the collection in 2013, thus becoming one of the rare institutions to possess a documented collection of popular paintings from the Congo. The canvases exhibited at BOZAR have been restored especially for the exhibition.