A new art center by and for the working classes
Bathtub Lecture, Stedelijk Museum
Dutch entry,
60th Biennale di Venezia
A radical new model turns the NFT into a tool for decolonization and digital restitution. Martens plays an organisational role in CATPC's reclamation of power over the long-lost Congolese Balot sculpture and buy back their land.
The six-part series Plantations and Museums follows CATPC members Matthieu Kasiama and Ced'art Tamasala as they travel to the battleground of the Pende rebellion and to the American museum that holds the Balot sculpture.
The film White Cube marks a new beginning:
how the concept of the white cube â with all the privileges it stands for â can be repurposed by plantation workers as a vehicle to buy back their land and begin a new inclusive and egalitarian world.
The first exhibition of the Cercle d'Art des Travailleurs de Plantation Congolaise (Congolese Plantation Workersâ Art League or CATPC) in the United States. Martens co-produced the exhibition and accompanying conference.
On 21 and 22 April 2017, a quintessential White Cube was repatriated on the site of Unileverâs first ever plantation of the D.R. Congo. Designed by OMA, the White Cube is the cent of CATPC's art program.
Human Activities organised the international conference series titled The Matter of Critique, referring to the material conditions of critical artistic engagement.
The art institute Human Activities, that Renzo Martens founded in 2012, aims for the âreverse gentrificationâ of rural Congo in close collaboration with the Cercle d'Art des Travailleurs de Plantation Congolaise (CATPC). As no contemporary art museum had established a program to connect with the communities that still live on the plantations that have funded these, Martens took the initiative to start such a program.
In an epic journey, the film establishes that poverty is the Congoâs most lucrative export product, generating more revenue than traditional exports like gold, diamonds, or cocoa.
In Episode I, which was shot in Chechnya during the Russian invasion in 2000, Renzo Martens reveals the mechanisms behind the visual economy of war. The film forms a metaphor for an economy of images, roles and emotions.
From 2025 on, Renzo Martens and Human Activities will conceive a new art center in Zeeuws-Vlaanderen, a self-operated switchboard for the production, presentation, and collection of art by and for the working classes. The new center will be built in a âmessy marginâ of the Netherlands: Zeeuws-Vlaanderen. Here, the community in Zeeland will create the art of the 21st century, in connection with communities in DR Congo, Indonesia, Surinam, and beyond. The program is called: Learn, Dig, Build.
On 30 November 2024, during the third Bathtub Lecture at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Renzo Martens and Cedâart Tamasala from CATPC outlined a shared future for the Stedelijk in which the museum is by and for everyone. Before the Bathtub Lecture, Renzo Martens dug into one of the corners of the Stedelijk Museum. Martensâ partial re-enactment of Jan Dibbetsâ historic work from the 1969 show Op losse schroeven, aimed to dig deeper into the museumâs foundations â how itâs built on profits derived from forced labour on plantations and speculation on its potential future earnings.
Renzo Martens, CATPC, and curator Hicham Khalidi provided the Dutch entry for the Venice Biennale 2024. The exhibition took place from 20 April to 24 November 2024 at the Rietveld Pavilion in Venice and simultaneously at the White Cube in Lusanga, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The sculptures travel to the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven (NL) for the exhibition Two Sides of the Same Coin, from 21 December 2024 until 2 March 2025.
"It is head-spinning stuff and speaks to the crushing truths that underpin both the art world and the sacrifice zones of wealth extraction."
William Kherbek, BerlinArtLink
"In short, the project, de-exoticizing and re-exoticizing, is politically problematic on almost every level, and itâs fascinating for that reason. It raises questions about imbalances of power based on race and class that are at the very foundation of modern Western culture, but that our big museums have resolutely refused to address, never mind tried to answer."
Holland Cotter, The New York Times
"This was the most challenging show of the year, and proudly âşproblematic,âš but that was the point: You need to be fearless, and run right into the swamp of possible misunderstanding, to have any hope of making a difference.
Jason Farago, The New York Times