Creativity
Popular painting from Kinshasa
‘The States of flux’ Exhibition - Tate Modern, London
Bodo, Turbulent World!!! Where are we going? 2006. Acrylic on canvas, 153 x 440 cm.
Courtesy of C.A.A.C. - The Pigozzi Collection, Geneva. Photo: Maurice Aeschimann.
Under this heading ‘The States of Flux’, the Tate Modern, one of the world's most prestigious venues for contemporary arts, has devoted one of the 15 rooms to ‘popular painting’ from Kinshasa. The exhibition is focused on key artistic movements woven into the fabric of the 20th century – specifically Cubism, Futurism and Vorticism. Vorticism is regarded as an English-style of Cubism, whose aesthetic approach owes a huge debt to the tools of technology and industry. Showcasing some of the museum's collection, the exhibition will run until March 2008.
“The school of popular painting” from Kinshasa, as its originator Chéri Samba calls it, comprises five leading figures, all showing at the Tate Modern: Chéri Samba himself, Cheik Ledy, his brother, Bodo, Chéri Chérin and Moke.
The eight works on display are a striking reflection of both the artists' modernity and their intensity of approach. They are all in step with the major artistic trends of the century, both in terms of formal freedom and contemporary issues.
Bodo's Monde en tourbillon. Où l'on va (Turbulent world. Where are we going) is a dense panoramic painting, using a post-9/11 allegory depicting the disembowelment, ripping apart and penetration of the world. It shows an African dimension through the presence of vehicles and high-tech machinery, indicative of the shadows of human bombs without brains as well as the darkness of the electronic age. Everything is placed in the context of a riot of colour but with man-made technology sexually assaulting Mother Earth and then committing suicide. An affinity might be sought here with the English Vorticists and the omnipresence of technology.
Similarly, Chéri Chérin's Où va le monde (Where is the world going) also raises questions in a work that may be a bit more impressionist but is equally cataclysmic. It focuses on a moral cataclysm against the background of the @ of the Internet.
Chéri Samba’s exhibit reflects upon the violence of the fratricidal war that has devastated the Democratic Republic of Congo and the terrible plight of the child soldiers. But his other two works are highly symbolic, as in Une peinture à défendre (A painting to fight for) where he uses his body in a Christ-like position as a screen to defend a painting.
But it is to the ancestral art of the Congo the master pays respect in Hommage aux anciens créateurs (Tribute to earlier creatures). An opportunity to portray himself in front of traditional sculptures, as though paying homage to the artists of yesteryear and a reflection of the high esteem in which contemporary African art is held today.
