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The Galleries at Moore A Congo Chronicle: Patrice Lumumba in Urban Art |
 
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Organized by The Museum for
African Art, New York September 15–October 29, 2000
“A Congo Chronicle: Patrice Lumumba in Urban Art” features 50 paintings by artists from the central African country of Congo, including Tshibumba Kanda-Matulu, Burozi, Tinda Lwimba, Mutanda wa Mutanda, among others. Their popular, urban art commemorates the heroic life and martyrdom of Patrice Lumumba, the man who led the struggle for Congolese independence from Belgian colonial rule. Elected as the new nation's first prime minister in 1960, Lumumba and his non-ethnic Congolese National Movement promised a program of unity and democracy. Within a year, he was arrested by one of his own generals, Mobutu Sese Seko–who would dominate Congo’s political life for nearly 40 years–and murdered. In the ensuing decades, the portraits of Lumumba painted by Tshibumba and others were transformed into symbols of popular resistance to Mobutu’'s corrupt regime and icons of hope for Congo’s future. Tshibumba and his fellow urban artists have been widely recognized for their visual narratives of the history of Congo through the turbulent decade of the 1970s. These artists often worked on canvasses made of flour sacks and shirt fabric; their galleries were the local cafés that served as the village squares of urban communities. Considering themselves historians as much as artists, they incorporated written text to underscore Lumumba’s iconic significance for the Congolese people as a symbol of opposition to the Mobutu regime “A Congo Chronicle” is a timely examination of how such artists as Tshibumba act as a new kind of African historian presenting Patrice Lumumba not just as a Congolese hero, but as a truly African one. This exhibition provides a rare opportunity to consider the ways in which such contemporary heroes as Lumumba and Nelson Mandela have become symbols of the collective African memory. For an American audience, it calls to mind the images of John F. Kennedy, Malcolm X, and the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., which serve as icons of American cultural memory. A fully illustrated catalog accompanies “A Congo Chronicle.” It includes essays by exhibition curator Bogumil Jewsiewicki, professor of history at Laval University, Quebec, and contributing scholars Dibwe dia Mwembu, Nyunda ya Rubango, Jean Omasombo Tshonda, Mary Nooter Roberts, and Allen F. Roberts. Setting the Stage: A Congo Primer
Opening reception Booksigning, Slide-Lecture, and Reception:
African Style: Down to the Details by Sharne Algotsson
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