Two Sides of the Same Coin

A plea for underexposed stories in the contemporary art world

Members of the Congolese artists' collective Cercle d'Art des Travailleurs de Plantation Congolaise (CATPC) live on a plantation in Lusanga. Land appropriated by Western multinationals and also depleted by them. Clay is extracted from this depleted soil, which CATPC uses to make models for their sculptures. The final sculptures consist of cocoa, palm fat and sugar and are exhibited and sold all over the world. With the proceeds, CATPC buys back land and tries to restore local biodiversity by planting various trees. In 2024, work by CATPC was on display in the Dutch pavilion at the Venice Biennale. The sculptures then travelled on to the Van Abbemuseum. There, visitors will experience sculptures, drawings, textile works and video installations by the Congolese collective, placed among artworks from the museum's collection. The exhibition Two Sides of the Same Coin, on view from 21 December 2024 to 2 March 2025, guides you through stories of colonisation, land regeneration and the place given to art originating from Congolese plantations in the art world. With the aim: a fairer distribution of recognition and wealth.

About CATPC

CATPC is a collective made up of former Congolese plantation workers, founded in 2014. CAPTC is chaired by well-known environmental activist René Ngongo. The makers work from Lusanga: the location of the first plantation of the British-Dutch company Unilever. Western multinationals destroyed local biodiversity. This left the original inhabitants with dry a barren land where nothing grows. After the collective bought back the land, they started planting a ‘sacred forest’. CATPC is thus turning the atrophied plantations into forests that provide local food security and increase biodiversity. They call this the ‘post-plantation’: a system that restores both land and life. The collective is thus working to counter global inequality, climate change and poverty. It is taking stock of the past, but also building a new future.

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In dialogue with the collection presentation Delinking and Relinking

The exhibition Two Sides of the Same Coin is a unique follow-up to the presentation at the Venice Biennale. In Eindhoven, it features new textile works, drawings and video installations in addition to the sculptures. CATPC's works are placed as interventions in the collection presentation Delinking and Relinking. A number of these works respond to the Van Abbemuseum's own colonial past and reinforce stories from the existing collection presentation Delinking and Relinking. In artworks created especially for this exhibition, CATPC bridges the Lusanga plantations and the plantations in Deli in Sumatra, where Van Abbemuseum founder and tobacco merchant Henri Van Abbe bought his tobacco. With these earnings, he founded the Van Abbemuseum and bought the collection. In the run-up to the exhibitions, some members of CATPC visit communities of plantation workers in Indonesia. And ask them for permission and ‘their blessing’ to exhibit at the Van Abbemuseum. The exhibition will feature conversations between CATPC members and communities in Indonesia. More stories about the Van Abbemuseum's own colonial past can be seen in the long-term research exhibition Hidden Connections.

Venice Biennale

Together with artist Renzo Martens (founder art institute Human Activities) and curator Hicham Khalidi, CATPC was the Dutch representation for the Venice Biennale. Their presentation The International Celebration of Blasphemy and the Sacred was on view from 20 April to 24 November 2024. A key element of the Venice presentation was the reference to the ‘White Cube’, based on the plantation in Lusanga, which symbolises Eurocentric museums, which may have a link to the past of forced labour on plantations and do not sufficiently recognise work and art produced by plantation workers. The sculptures displayed by CATPC are made of palm oil and cocoa: raw materials that were grown on the plantations in Lusanga. The Dutch pavilion also features a wooden sculpture of a Belgian colonial officer Balot, via a live stream from Lusanga in Congo. The sculpture was exhibited there for six months during the Biennale.

Sculpture Balot

Unlike the Venice Biennale, the Balot sculpture will not be shown via a livestream from the White Cube in Lusanga, but will actually travel to the Van Abbemuseum. Maximilien Balot was a Belgian colonial officer who was part of a system that used degrading methods to force people from the Pende people of Congo into plantation labour. In an act of resistance, he was killed in 1931. That same year, the sculpture was created, which served to capture Balot's spirit and place it at the service of the Pende people. This loan from the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (USA) will be presented at the White Cube Museum during the Venice Biennale. It was CATPC's long-held desire to reunite the sculpture with the people of Lusanga, who can reconnect with their history and resistance through this return. After the biennial, Balot, by CATPC's express wish, did not directly travel back to the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, but will be on show together with the other works in Eindhoven. CATPC hopes the sculpture will bring together different stories of resistance. This decision marks an important step in the discussion to make the (own) colonial history of museums, forced labour on plantations and art made by workers on (former) plantations more visible. Read more in the article about Balot's journey.

This exhibition is made possible by: