BELGIUM: The biggest Congolese "Yambi" arts festival Belgium has ever seen comes to a close

Belgium celebrated Congolese arts for two months welcoming 150 artists who showcased their music, theatre, sculpture and photography to the former colony. But it is now coming to a close at the end of October. Singers and musicians from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) held a special end of show performance at Brussels prestigious Contemporary Arts museum, the Bozar Palace, on Saturday (October 20). They all took part in the huge Congolese arts festival 'Yambi', which means "welcome" in Swahili. 'Choeur la Grace' is a choir from Kinshasa which has been singing since 1985 and is made up of professional singers from different Congolese churches. The choir master, Ambroise Kua-Nzambi Toko, says the choral singers sing in many as 22 African languages. Kua-Nzambi Toko says the festival was very important for him because of the way the history of the DRC, formerly known as the Belgian Congo,'interweaves' with that of Belgium. It was Belgium's King Leopold II who colonised the Congo. During that time historians say its people were decimated and their lands pillaged. The King relinquished his personal control over of the Congo to the Belgian state in 1908 and the country finally gained independence in 1960. A lot of Congolese nationals as well as second and third generation children of Congolese now live in Belgium, the majority of whom can be found in the lively Matonge district of the capital Brussels. "I think Belgian and Congolese people have a common history. And so it's a love story which dates from a long time ago, and, well, in the cultural domain, I think it's important," Kua-Nzambi Toko says. The evening show opened with 'Tuta Mgoma', also from Kinshasa. It is made up of a dozen percussionists and dancers. The percussionist Henoch Mbay Kamanda joined the group in 1996 and said he was dazzled by the welcome he received from the Belgian public. "It's great! I will never forget the Belgian public. It has always been wonderful." The 'Kasai Allstars' were also performing although they were not on the official Yambi programme. The musicians come from different parts of the DRC's Kasai province and all speak different dialects. "We try to make a linguistic effort in order to learn the languages of others, be it just for what is in the song, and we do it together. And when one ethnic group sings, the other dances," says Hubert Mputu Ebondo, the "The Kasai Allstars" lead singer. The show was a hit with its Belgian public. "There was a symbiosis between the public and the artist. It was fantastic, there is no other word for it," said Christian Poll. Just a stone's throw from the Bozar was also an exhibition of plastic arts at The Botanique art centre which is also the city's main botanical garden. The building housed the best of Yambi's plastic artists and invited the public to discover some of the Congo's best modern sculptors, painters, photographers and installation artists. 'The Shadow of the Shadows' by Aime Mpane is made out of entirely of matches and, as the name suggests, is a play on light and shadows. Last year, Mpane received the special Blachere Foundation prize for this work at the Dakar Biennal of Contemporary African Arts. The Blachere Foundation was set up in France to promote and help contemporary African artists. Mpane, who moves between Brussels and Kinshasa, says the 'Shadow of Shadows' is meant to represent the Congo's fragility. But he also wants to wake people up to the condition of people in the Congo and, although not overtly political, his work is certainly intended to provoke a reaction amongst his own people and the world outside. "It's a way of showing people things we don't know about, not only to our opponents, but even to the Congolese people so that everybody becomes conscious and that people get moving. Everybody should move a bit, we should not go on sleeping," said Aime Mpane. Photographer Sammy Baloji exhibited a series of photo-montages which he says is part of the 'Gecamines' project. Gecamines is a state-owned Congolese mining company in the southern Katanga province and was originally under Belgian ownership. Katanga's huge mineral wealth in copper, cobalt, tin, uranium and zinc contributed to Belgium's development but not to that of the Congolese people although some of the proceeds were used to build the Benguela railway which connected The Congo with Angola's coastline. In 1959, profits for Belgium from the original company, the Mining Union of High Katanga (UMHK), were in excess of 3.5 billion Belgian francs. Up to 50 percent of the The Congo's own revenue came from export duties. Eventually, it was Mobutu's government which took full possession of the UMHK which it renamed Gecamines but mismanagement, lack of investment in new mining technologies and corruption led to a 70 percent fall in production. Baloji's work is haunting and encapsulates the mine's history and progress from the exploitation of the colonies to today. The photographs are a collage of old pictures of miners, usually standing up in a line and each with a number, fixed onto modern day photographs of the mines. The contrast between the two images, the workers in monochrome and the mines in colour, is contemporary and leaves the viewer with a strong vision of the exploitation of the people and the land over time. Congolese artists Olivier Goka and Bernard Babette joined forces for their work, the Vonpischmeyer collection: Goka's sculptures are salvaged plastic humouristically moulded into primitive art and put together make up a made up real 'false collection of primitive art' . His idea is to re-create the original shape and form of ritualistic and minimalist African sculptures but with a modern, non-organic material. Goka's intention here is to play with the idea of authenticity and the collections built up in colonial and post colonial times. This play on concepts was also used in one of the Chapman Brothers exhibition at the Cube gallery in London some years ago where they exhibited false primitive African sculptures, some of which donned signs of modernity such as the world famous yellow 'M' from Mac Donald's restaurants for example. The photographs by Babette further stress the notion of art works which could have been unearthed from ancient sites in Africa. Photographs by Nono Katanga hung in the conservatory amongst the plants in a small exhibition called "Africa, are you going to wake up?" The final day of the Yambi festival is October 30.

ITN Source | October 29, 2007

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