Guest editor: CATPC
For each issue, GLEAN invites a Guest Editor to curate a section of the magazine. We interview them and ask them to invite writers and artists who have influenced their practice (or who otherwise deserve our attention) to take up space in these pages.
CATPC (Cercle d’Art des Travailleurs de Plantations Congolaise) is a unique gathering of individuals, a physical space, a conceptual laboratory and a vehicle for rethinking colonial power relations within the global art world. Founded in 2014, the collective is based in Lusanga, DRC. With the proceeds of their art, CATPC has secured hundreds of hectares of former plantation land for future generations. On this land they have built a museum, the White Cube (the subject of a video work titled Judgement of the White Cube). The region is also the focus of their efforts to restore worker-owned, inclusive and ecologically sound food forests for a project called the Post Plantation. Together with artist Renzo Martens and curator Hicham Khalidi, CATPC will represent the Netherlands at this year’s Venice Biennale. Their presentation will extend beyond the Dutch pavilion at the Biennale, including a parallel exhibition in the White Cube in Lusanga.
For this issue, CATPC invited Jean Katambayi Mukendi to contribute an essay. This special supplement also includes an excerpt from the script of CATPC’s unreleased film Judgement of the White Cube; images by Brussels- and Kinshasa-based photographer Léonard Pongo, who visited the collective in Lusanga as early as 2016; drawings by CATPC member Mathieu Kasiama; and a conversation between Kathleen Weyts and artist Ced’art Tamasala, co-founder of CATPC.
