Kinshasa Chronicles

Capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kinshasa is the third largest city in Africa. After the Musée international des arts modestes in Sète, it is the turn of the Cité de l’architecture et du patrimoine in Paris to present until July 5th, 2021 a broad panorama of the artists it inspires. Anthropologist Jean-Loup Amselle, a specialist on Africa, visited the museum. This article initiates a series of rendez-vous in our pages echoing the Africa 2020 season.

The exhibition Kinshasa Chroniques [Kinshasa Chronicles] is in itself a landmark event in the world of contemporary African art and, more broadly, of the image of Africa in the world. While the discussion is largely focused on the restitution of so-called “primary” works of art to Africa, this exhibition, which according to its creators will tour worldwide, even contrasts with other artistic events, particularly African biennials, because it wants above all to appear comprehensive (1). Its offer is indeed very broad since it actually concerns, through the destiny of its megalopolises, the future of the entire planet. By means of a sort of urban and architectural decentering, the future of our civilisation would not be or no longer be delineated in “Western” metropolises such as Paris, New York orTokyo, but in monstrously sprawling, densely populated cities such as Kinshasa, which will become even more so in the course of the 21st century. This exhibition thus reflects a sort of shift in the world that echoes post-colonial and decolonising theories. It is no longer a question of thinking about the world from its “centre”, but from its “peripheries” or, more precisely, from its peripheral epistemologies and ontologies, in this case those deployed in the heart of Central Africa. A source of rejuvenation would thus spring from “the heart of (African) darkness”, to use the title of Joseph Conrad’s world-famous work.

“TIN CAN MEN”

Kinshasa has for eons been the object of well-known fascination for expatriates, tourists and anthropologists. The “Kin la Belle” sung by the rapper Damso has long attracted lovers of bars, African women, beer and “sapeurs” (2), all of which find an echo in this exhibition. For several decades, especially under the rule of Marshal Mobutu, this city experienced a golden age. It was in fact a playground, an adventure playground that excited the imagination of Westerners far more than the Congolian rainforest, home to the Mbuti pygmies. Urban jungles have,

in fact, long since taken over the primitivism of the world’s most isolated tribes, such as those of the Amazonia, New Guinea and Central Africa.The suburbs of Western countries, particularly the French suburbs, which live largely on the informal economy centred around drug trafficking and other unregistered activities, thus offer a palette of exotic elements to the privileged social classes by manifesting their singularity through certain artistic expressions, such as rap, hip-hop and break dancing. The case of Kinshasa represents, of course, a considerable change of scale in terms of informal economy and the development of suburban artistic forms compared to Western suburbs. The economy of resourcefulness and recycling reaches its climax in cities like Kinshasa as elsewhere in Africa. In the artistic field, the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo has always been the favoured place of expression for several artists who have acquired international fame, such as Bodys Isek Kingelez’s models of utopian cities, which are, moreover, reinterpreted by younger artists exhibited in Kinshasa Chroniques, such as Sinzo Aanza. Other artists or rather performers like Eddy Ekete and his “Tin Can Men” have already performed in Paris in front of the Musée du quai Branly, thus giving credence, once again, to the idea of contemporary African art as recycler of our waste. Though the dilapidated character of Kinshasa is well represented in this exhibition, but not of course from the miserabilist angle that is the opposite of the perspective of its curators, its constructive and prophetic aspect is more strongly represented by, in particular, the utopian tower of about ten storeys built by a Kinshasa doctor. It contains all the activities of a future human community in an unfinished building that lacks water and electricity.

AFRO-FUTURISM

Kinshasa is therefore presented in this exhibition as a city of which the inhabitants, like those of many other African cities, endure very difficult living conditions because of a lack of jobs, money, water and electricity, but also as a place of considerable social and cultural wealth. A large number of works by Congolese artists in the form of statue-sculptures, photographs, comic strips and videos are on display, some of which are truly astonishing, such as that of the transgender figure in the mud with his tutu and stilettos. Others are of a more primitivist inspiration, such as a man wearing a crocodile mask wandering among a crowd of delighted children. For primitivism, the image of a “traditional” Africa of secret societies, always present in urban areas, is combined with that of Afro-futurism symbolised by the video of the Kongo Astronauts travelling through the jungle. The Africa represented in Kinshasa Chro

niques is therefore oriented towards a prophetism that intends to step over the present in order to reach a promising future. In this it takes up the theme of Marshal Mobutu’s attempt in the 1970s to launch rockets from Congolese territory. It also finds an echo in the announcement of the manufacture of satellites by Burkina Faso and in the futuristic city that the American rapper Akon plans to build in Senegal. As if all these attempts were intended to conceal the prejudices that the West projects about Africa, which aim to confine the continent to an irretrievable lag. It is indeed the image of an African Tiger or Tigers that all these artistic and urban enterprises want to give. But it is also a lesson in humanism that they want to deliver. African cities like Kinshasa in a way lag behind modernity and development, but it is precisely this kind of backwardness that makes them a resource for the whole planet, especially for those Western megacities that are in a way becoming Africanised due to the growing weight of the informal sector and the new forms of urban art.There is no longer aThird World or South, since the Third World and the South are at the heart of the cities of the North; and Paris, New York and Tokyo in the course of the 21st century will be obliged to model their development on that of cities like Kinshasa.

ARTISTIC CITY

Kinshasa Chroniques focuses on the exhibition of works by artists of the city, of artists in the city and of the city as a work of art, so that it is no longer clear in which space one

is moving. Kinshasa therefore makes art for its curators as nature once did for Jacques Bergier and Louis Pauwels, authors of The

Morning of the Magicians (1960). And in a way, Kinshasa makes, from an Afrocentric perspective, not only art for us in general, but art for art’s sake, urban art and the art of living. This exhibition underlines once and for all the fact that the West has taken the wrong path and that, in particular, the urbanist itinerary leading to uninterrupted progress resulting in more skyscrapers, motorways and shopping centres is illusory and leads to a dead end. Fortunately, it seems to be telling us, Africa, symbolised by Kinshasa, which is in a way the world’s rubbish dump, has taken up the torch and has indigenised the western urban scheme by giving it new vigour, by regenerating it. By reappropriating the colonial urban model of Léopoldville (the former name of Kinshasa), twisting it, submerging it in a young population grown exponentially, it has extorted its truth from it and brandished it before the eyes of the world. In this sense the proposition of Kinshasa

Chroniques is not entirely original, even if it is exemplary. Architects such as the Dutch Rem Koolhaas have already developed similar analyses of other African cities, such as Lagos in Nigeria (4). As in the case of Kinshasa, many Westerners have been concerned by the poverty, insecurity, insalubrity and urban congestion prevailing in the Nigerian megalopolis. While for many it was impossible to live there, “Afroptimists” such as the starchitect Rem Koolhaas perceived a certain form of urban positivity symbolised by the famous traffic jams where, because of the near immobility of cars, a profitable market could flourish. In short, the necessary “informalisation” of the world is taught us by Africa, starting from Africa itself. It is Africa that should provide the alternative models for the West to renew itself. A kind of “cargo cult” (4), of prophetism by delegation is thus offered to the West in a path that postcolonial and decolonising authors have taken. Far from Europe or the West coming to the bedside of Africa, it is this continent, the cradle of humanity, that will once again fly to the rescue of the human species.

Kinshasa Chroniques or the chronicle of a decaying world, which is at the same time a ferment of recomposition for a world adrift. “The world will be saved by small countries”, said André Gide. We could add: by the cities that are the most destitute, but which are the bearers of the greatest hope for the future. An allegory of the relationship between Africa and the West, Kinshasa Chroniques symbolises in a beautiful way the change that is taking place in the world. It is no longer just Europe’s responsibility to return the goods stolen during colonisation, it is also Africa’s duty to give new colours to a tired West.

Translation: Chloé Baker

(1) See the interview with Dominique Malaquais, managing curator of the exhibition, on Telesud, October 22nd, 2020. I visited the exhibition on the day of the opening and, in this article, I have been largely inspired by this interview. See also the catalogue published under the direction of D. Malaquais, MIAM/Cité de l’architecture et du patrimoine/Éditions de l’OEil, 384 p., 30 euros. (2) Dandies, members of subculture La Sape (Société des Ambianceurs et des Gens Élégantes [Society of Ambiance-Makers and Elegant People]) and referring to the French slang words “sape” [clothes] or “sapé”, [dressed up]. [TN] (3) See Jean-Loup Amselle, l’Art de la friche. Essai sur l’art africain contemporain, Paris, Flammarion, 2005. (4) The expression “cargo cult” refers to the act of imitating behaviour in the hope of obtaining the same results, but without understanding how it works. Historically, the cargo cult refers to aboriginal rites that appeared between the 19th and 20th centuries in reaction to the colonisation of Melanesia (Oceania).They lent divine properties to Western technique and culture. Jean-Loup Amselle is an anthropologist and emeritus director of studies at the EHESS (Paris). Latest publications: En quête d’Afrique(s). Universalisme et pensée décoloniale (with Souleymane Bachir Diagne), Paris, Albin Michel, 2018; À chacun son Marx ou les mésaventures de la dialectique, Paris, Kimé, 2019; l’Universalité du racisme, Paris, Lignes, 2020.