CATPC - Cercle d’art des travailleurs de plantation congolaise - Congolese Plantation Workers Art League

Texts by Ariella Azoulay, Eva Barois De Caevel, Eléonore Hellio, Ruba Katrib, Alexander Koch, J. A. Koster, Renzo Martens, René Ngongo, Els Roelandt, Charles Sikitele Gize, Charles Tumba, Françoise Vergès
Photos by Léonard Pongo

This book offers a first report on the activities of the Cercle d’art des travailleurs de plantation congolaise (CATPC), an association based in Lusanga, in the Democratic Republic of Congo. CATPC brings together a unique gathering of individuals—along with its members and partner institutions that are engaged in dialogue with it—and attempts to rethink postcolonial power relations within the global art world. Initiated in 2014 by Renzo Martens, an Amsterdam-based artist whose radical and controversial practice feeds into many current debates, and René Ngongo, a Kinshasa-based biologist and environmental activist, this cooperative continues to develop independently and to redefine the relations between art, agriculture, industry, and value creation.

The publication CATPC—Cercle d’art des travailleurs de plantation congolaise/Congolese Plantation Workers Art League is part of an artistic research project initiated by Renzo Martens, affiliated as a researcher at KASK/School of Arts of University College Ghent, from 2012 to 2016.

Design by Jurgen Maelfeyt, Jonas Temmerman, 6'56''