Images of power, images of humiliation: Congolese "colonial" sculpture for sale in Rwanda.

It is one of the most powerful images in what Fabian calls Congolese popular art: A large, stern-faced African policeman prepares to administer a blow to a prone African prisoner, while a Belgian administrator looks on. The painting typically bears the caption Colonie Beige ("Belgian colony"; see Fabian and Tshibumba 1996; Jewsiewicki 1992, 1999 calls such paintings "urban art"). Colonie Belge was in the repertory of most popular painters in Lubumbashi in the 1970s but not, to my knowledge, in the repertory of sculptors. Recently, however, I discovered wooden sculptures, listed for sale as "Temps Colonial" ("Colonial Days"), corresponding to this image. These were included among collections of "traditional" Congolese art--mainly masks and statues--for sale in Rwanda.

The immediate context of the production and sale of these artworks was the occupation of much of eastern Democratic Republic of Congo by the Rwandan armed forces and Congolese "rebels" allied to them. News reports have focused on the exploitation of diamonds, coltan, timber, and other resources in the zones occupied by Rwanda and Uganda (IRIN 2000). The export of art and handicrafts has drawn less attention. Since European and American customers have stopped visiting their own country, Congolese art vendors bring their wares to Butare and Kigali, Rwanda. For some of these vendors, the strategy was successful. I bought two of the Colonie Belge flogging sculptures, two more showing Congolese prisoners transporting a white man in a hammock, and others showing a lone Belgian officer, a lone Congolese prisoner, or a lone policeman. The circle was closed when a Congolese, who had been bringing me "colonial" sculptures, returned from Congo with a Colonie Beige painting, signed by Nguba M., apparently painted in the 1970s.

All these types of sculpture are called Temps Colonial, orally and in the handwritten price-lists deposited with the consigned art objects. When I ask door-to-door vendors about the characteristics of Temps Colonial, they sometimes answer in terms of "prisoners," sometimes in terms of "carrying someone." I will refer to the sculptures under discussion as Flogging A (Fig. 1) and B (Fig. 2), Transporting A (Fig. 3) and B (Fig. 4), Standing Belgian A (Fig. 5) and B (Fig. 6), Reclining Belgian (Fig. 7), Standing Policeman (Fig. 8), and Standing Prisoner (Fig. 9).

[FIGURES 1-9 OMITTED]

The Temps Colonial sculptures are related to two other bodies of Congolese art: the popular or urban paintings whose subject matter is similar to that of the sculptures and the "traditional" wooden sculptures offered for sale with the "colonial" wooden sculptures. In exploring this genre I conducted interviews with sculptors for insight into the inspiration for their work as well as their techniques. I also interviewed the vendors who often are the intermediaries between the African sculptors and the white purchasers; in many cases, analysis of their sales pitches and their answers to my questions illuminated aspects of the artworks that could not be derived from the works themselves or the testimony of those who made them.

The Colonie Belge Paintings

Many Lubumbashi artists had Colonie Belge in their repertory in the 1970s. Jewsiewicki (1992) publishes versions by Nkulu and Tshibumba; Fabian and Tshibumba (1996) reproduce versions by Tshibumba and Mutombo. I own versions by Tshibumba and Kalema, purchased in the 1970s, in addition to the recently purchased Nguba painting. The painting was "popular" in two senses: not only "of the people" but also "in demand." The fact that so many artists offered it testifies to the high demand for this type of painting, on the part of Congolese as well as expatriates. I shall discuss the Tshibumba (Fig. 10), Mutombo (Fabian and Tshibumba 1996:203, fig. 1.9), Kalema (Fig. 11), and Nguba (Fig. 12) versions of Colonie Belge. (For other versions of Colonie Belge, some anonymous, see Jewsiewicki 1991:136.)

[FIGURES 10-12 OMITTED]

The central motif is the flogging of a prisoner, under the supervision of a Belgian. Imprisonment and corporal punishment are seen as epitomizing colonial rule. Narrating his version of Colonie Beige to Fabian, Tshibumba contrasted the colonial era to precolonial village life:

   The colonial period was a time of
   servitude. They put people in prison
   and beat them with canes. Yes,
   they were flogging people in prison.
   It wasn't the way it used to be in the
   village when you had transgressed
   and they would grab you and beat
   you. In prison, the flogging was like
   paying a fine when you had done
   something bad. The flogging took
   place during roll call. It could happen
   that you were in the lineup and
   did not quite understand what the
   supervisors said. Then they would
   beat you with a cane (Fabian and
   Tshibumba 1996:68).

Each artist incorporates the central motif, although there are some interesting variations. Tshibnmba, Mutombo, Kalema, and Nguba all include a Belgian officer, a Congolese soldier with cane raised, and a prone prisoner. Other shared elements include the Belgian flag, the soldier with a bugle (situating the flogging at morning roll call), additional prisoners and soldiers, and one or more colonial buildings.

Beyond the elements common to all four paintings, others are shared by two or three of them. The Belgian officer in the Tshibumba, Kalema, and Mutombo versions is smoking a pipe, which I take to symbolize detachment. In their versions of Colonie Belge, Tshibumba and Mutombo picture the Belgian officer with hands behind his back. Nguba, in contrast, shows the officer counting the strokes of the cane or indicating the number to be inflicted (Fig. 12b; three fingers meant three times ten, according to the vendor Olivier). Kalema's officer (Fig. 11), writing on a piece of paper as he puffs on his pipe, is less detached than those of Tshibumba and Mutombo but less involved than that of Nguba.

Prisoners in chains appear in the Mutombo, Kalema, and Nguba paintings. Prisoners' wives figure prominently in the Tshibumba and Nguba versions (along with food that they are bringing to their husbands). Tshibumba and Mutombo show prisoners carrying a bucket marked T.P. or T.P.M., i.e., Public Works. It was "a bucket of shit," Tshibumba explained, "because when the people are in prison the doors are locked and they relieve themselves in a vat. Then in the morning, some of them are picked to carry the stuff and throw it out" (Fabian and Tshibumba 1996:69). The humiliation is obvious.

Despite the common elements, the four paintings are quite different in style and especially in composition. Tshibumba's Colonie Belge (Fig. 10) centers on an inverted T, formed by the prisoner and the guard. The curve of the cane echoes the curve of the prisoner's body. In contrast, Mutombo's version (Fabian and Tshibumba 1996:203, fig. 1.9) is organized around an L: the guard and the Belgian, standing side by side, form the upright (extended by the raised cane). The prone prisoner forms a horizontal line, which is extended by two additional pairs of prisoners.

Both Kalema and Nguba divide their paintings into panels, much like comic strips. Kalema's "Congo Beige" (Fig. 11; the sign on the main building provides the title) is divided into unequal panels by the flagpole. The main scene occurs in the panel to the right of the pole. To the left, one third of the picture is devoted to two other guards and two prisoners (one in civilian clothes but nonetheless in chains). The Nguba picture (Fig. 12a) is even more cartoonish. The painting is divided by an invisible vertical midline that runs between the Belgian and a guard. The two halves of the painting thus are of almost equal importance. To the left is the scene of the guard flogging the prone prisoner, while the Belgian signals the number of blows. To the right, a guard chases away three wives; each has a baby on her back and a parcel (presumably of food) in her hand. Nguba's African prisoners have wide white lips (Fig. 12c), reminiscent of Tintin au Congo (Herge 1931).

The Congolese reaction to the various versions of Colonie Belge over the years is typified by the testimony of Denis Muba, who bought one of the early Flogging paintings in 1957:

   I bought this painting specifically
   in order to remember the humiliation
   that the Belgians made us
   undergo. You see someone receiving
   some blows from a whip, unclothed,
   in the presence of his
   wife. It's the greatest crime that the
   colonizer committed. The colonial
   system had introduced not only
   discipline and the respect of the
   law, but also and above all fear,
   terror. That's what Mobutu used to
   stay in power. I always used this
   painting to show my children the
   good and bad memories of the colonial
   period. The children were so
   angry that they took down the painting.
   They even wanted to tear it
   up or burn it (Dibwe et al. 2000,
   my translation; see also Dembour
   1992).

The Paintings and the Sculpture

The two sculptures that I call Flogging A (Fig. 1) and B (Fig. 2) correspond to the Colonie Belge painting, as exemplified by the four versions we have been considering. Similarly, Transporting A (Fig. 3) and B (Fig. 4) correspond to Cheri Benga's "Epoque Coloniale" (Fig. 13) or some category of paintings of which it is an exemplar. However, it is not clear how the correspondence came about.

[FIGURE 13 OMITTED]

The two flogging sculptures appear to be the work of different carvers. However, the sculptures resemble one another more closely than either resembles any of the paintings, or than the various paintings resemble one another. It seems likely that one sculpture is copied from the other, or that both were copied from an "original" flogging sculpture.

Whether or not there was a direct model, the sculptors do not mimic the painters. Rather, they adapt the theme of two-dimensional paintings to the three dimensions of sculpture. The canon of sculptural form in the flogging sculptures continues to derive from a European model e.g., ratio of head to body (Jan Vansina, personal communication, December 2001). In both Flogging A and B, the visual focus is on the raised cane and the hapless prisoner. Yet each sculpture clearly is meant to be viewed from behind as well: the Belgian has one arm folded behind his back (Figs. 1-2).

Some differences between the paintings and the sculptures are necessary consequences of the translation from one medium to another. Details of the Colonie Beige paintings disappear: the other prisoners, the wives, and the administrative buildings. Other differences cannot be explained by the translation. While in many paintings the Belgian is a passive supervisor, in both sculptures, the Belgian officer and the African soldier stand shoulder to shoulder. They are equally engaged even if the African is administering the blows.

Transporting A and B (Figs. 3-4) also simplify the complex painting by Cheri Benga. Gone are the African guards, the other porters carrying luggage, and the road and the countryside. Instead of four porters, two men transport the colonial official.

When the Congolese are prisoners, they generally are shown in striped shirts (Fig. 3a), as in the Colonie Belge paintings. In Cheri Benga's "Epoque Coloniale" painting, in contrast, the porters wear loincloths. And in Transporting B (Fig. 4), they are shown in shirts and trousers. The latter examples suggest that any Congolese male could be pressed into service, as indeed was the case throughout the colonial era. The Congolese either are caned on the orders of the Belgian or they transport the Belgian (the white man as burden).

The African policeman or soldier is shown in a uniform of the Force Publique (police force/army of the Belgian Congo): He wears a long sleeved shirt and short pants. On his head is the red fez that earned these hated men the nickname of "palm nuts" (Fig. 2). He administers the blows on behalf of his white boss. As the first prime minister, Patrice Lumumba, declared on Independence Day (June 30, 1960), Congo's prisons held "those who had escaped the bullets of the soldiers whom the colonialists had made the tools of their domination" (Lumumba 1963:199).

The white man appears in most "colonial" sculptures, alone or with Congolese. He is shown in uniform. Typically, he is wearing a capitula or long shorts, knee socks, and a casque colonial or pith helmet. This uniform epitomized the status and power of the white colonial administrator, to which many Congolese aspired.

The flogging sculptures (Figs. 1-2) comprise three figures, which can be resolved into two categories. By race or nationality, the lone Belgian is opposed to two Congolese. However, the Congolese soldier stands parallel to his Belgian superior and the two are perpendicular to the Congolese prisoner. The two salient categories are the colonial state (including the soldier, "tool of the colonialists' domination") and the population.

The lone "colonial" statues include Belgians, prisoners, and soldiers. They can be sold separately or as a set of three. I have seen many more single Belgians than the other two. Prisoners are more numerous than soldiers. A salesman who has all three in his sack will insist that they can only be sold as a set. One explained, "C'est l'histoire." ("It's history" or possibly, "it's the story.") A set of single figures recalls the narrative of the flogging statues. Some of the single Belgians clearly evoke that narrative, in that the Belgian holds up three or four fingers, indicating the number of blows to be inflicted.

In contrast to the flogging sculptures, the single figures conform to the African sculptural canon; that is, the heads are big, as in "traditional" sculptures of the region. A given carver renders the Congolese and the Belgians in much the same fashion: similar ears, noses, and lips. "Radal" difference can be seen mainly in the hair--where heads are not shaven--and skin color. The similarities and differences thus depicted serve to highlight identity and difference, the contradiction inherent in colonialism as in slavery.

The flogging sculptures may correspond to a particular painting. If so, it is a painting that I have not seen. However, most of the details of the sculptures correspond to one or more of the four paintings. The sculptor might have borrowed the Belgian in pith helmet and short pants from Mutombo. The side-by-side stance of the Belgian and the soldier with the cane echoes Kalema. The officer counting blows on his fingers corresponds to Nguba, although the number of fingers extended may differ. It is as though there were a shared visual lexicon of "Colonie" motifs, established by the painters, from which the sculptors selected details that suited their own medium.

Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that there is a shared visual lexicon, which antedates both "popular" paintings and the equivalent sculptures. The three stock images of the "colonial" genre--the Belgian administrator, the African soldier, and the African prisoner--date back to the early days of colonial rule. A mural on a house in Faradje, northeastern Congo, photographed in 1913, includes images of armed Belgians and Africans, a man on horseback, and African prisoners tied or yoked together. A second mural depicts (with apparent irony) a European man and woman at the dinner table, attended by a large number of armed African soldiers (Schildkrout and Keim 1990:22; see also Jewsiewicki 1991:144).

In the 1920s and '30s, Congolese painters Albert Lubaki and Tshiyela Ntendu modified the lexicon, offering what Jewsiewicki calls an "inventory of the colonial (modern) world" (Jewsiewicki 1991:144). In their works, the earlier soldiers and administrators reappear, but one of the latter is seated before a typewriter and a bottle. Indigenous birds and animals and imported modes of transportation--the automobile, the train, the steamboat, and the bicycle--are juxtaposed. The Colonie Belge paintings and sculptures turn back the clock, in that such symbols of modernity are rare.

The colonial world entered the Congolese sculptural repertory early on, at about the same time as the wall paintings. Cole juxtaposes a photograph of a bearded state employee being transported in a bath chair converted into a litter, with a sculpture of a "bearded white man being carried by two Africans" (Cole 1989:118). The Kongo carver, working early in the twentieth century, "appears to satirize the white missionary" or administrator (ibid., 184). I suspect that the photograph and the sculpture are parallel representations of a similar scene in real life, although it is possible that the sculpture is based on the photo.

In contrast to the Transporting sculptures, the Flogging sculptures seem to be a recent innovation. Although I cannot identify a prototype, it seems likely that at some point a sculptor saw and was inspired by a Colonie Belge painting or a photograph of one in a book. This could not have happened earlier than the eve of independence; Denis Muba bought the earliest "flogging" painting I know of in 1957.

The idea that a painting inspired the flogging sculptures is supported by one of my suppliers / informants, Olivier, a Lega from Shabunda. When I asked why Congolese made sculptures of Belgians, he offered a twofold explanation. "It was at the time of our fathers, or grandfathers, in colonial times. The Belgians called Congolese sculptors, and showed them photos, and ordered statues made." (In Congolese French, a "photo" can also be a sketch.)

Then, apparently feeling the need to explain further, Olivier told another story, echoing what he had told me previously regarding sculptures of chiefs. "When the white man went away from his house or office, he would leave the statue in the doorway. When people saw the statue, they knew that the white man was not there." The statue was not merely a marker (as in the American expression, "The doctor is not in") but a surrogate for the absent official. If the white man was killed or wounded in a battle, Olivier explained, the statue fell over. (On the link between the chief and the statue of the chief in Luba culture, see Roberts and Roberts 1996, 1999.)

Olivier's two explanations--genetic and functional--each capture a facet of the situation. However, I doubt that a Belgian (or other white man) showed the image to the carver in colonial days. It probably happened around twenty years ago. Tshibumba and other painters flourished in the period from about 1966 (when relative peace and prosperity returned as the Mobutu regime stabilized) to the mid or late 1970s (when Mobutu's "Zairianization" and "radicalization" policies led to economic disorganization and insecurity rose due to the two invasions of Shaba/Katanga). I saw no sculptures corresponding to their paintings in Lubumbashi, in Kinshasa, or in Maniema, during my stay in Lubumbashi, 1973-75, or visits to Kinshasa and Maniema in the 1980s and 1990s. If an outsider showed one of the paintings to a sculptor, it could have happened in the 1970s; if he showed him an illustration in a book it must have happened in the 1980s or even later.

The Temps Colonial genre of sculpture seems to have coalesced around the image of flogging, deriving from "popular art" paintings. However, the sculptures do not merely adapt borrowed images. Reclining Belgian (Fig. 7), in which the policeman lies on a bed reading his book, seems to be an invention of the sculptor. In another such sculpture, apparently by the same artist, the reclining policeman has his pith helmet on his stomach.

Despite superficial similarity, noted by several people who are familiar with this art, I doubt that the "colonial" statues produced in Cote d'Ivoire inspired those of eastern Congo. As Steiner explains, the former were originally for indigenous use, i.e., to express a desire that a person's spirit-world lover would exhibit those signs of success that characterize a white-dominated world. Later they were imitated as souvenirs for Frenchmen returning from West Africa. The Ivorian statues usually correspond to sculptural traditions of the Baule or Guro. They generally stand on a base or pedestal, which the Congolese single figures lack. Most important, the Congolese statues are explicitly or implicitly narrative, while the Ivorian figures are not. That narrative deals not with success but with humiliation (Steiner 1994:148-154).

"Traditional" and "Colonial" Sculptures

The Temps Colonial sculptures are offered for sale among "traditional" statues and masks. Both sculptors and peddlers insist that the two belong together. However, there are important differences between the two categories. First, all the "traditional" objects are attributed, accurately or inaccurately, to a specific ethnic community: Luba, Hemba, Buyu, and so on. (As Steiner has noted, ethnic attribution is an intrinsic element in the definition and classification of African art objects; 1994:91.) In contrast, the "colonial" objects usually are given only a geographic provenience, most often Maniema or the town of Shabunda, in Maniema. (I have seen one mention of Tabwa, Kalemie, on a list; I was unable to inspect the object because it already had been sold.) The lack of an ethnic reference may suggest that the "colonial" sculptures, like Tshibumba's "History of Zaire" paintings, are conceived of as national rather than ethnic (Young 1992:119). Alternatively, Maniema may well be a trope signifying (from a Bukavu perspective) the countryside, the wild, the pagan, as opposed to Bukavu, the urban, the civilized, the Catholic. From a Maniema perspective, the values would be inverted: Maniema is nationalist, Lumumbist, while Bukavu is Catholic, European-dominated, particularistic (Verhaegen 1969).

More significant differences between the traditional and the colonial exist on the iconic level. "Traditional" Congo sculptures offered for sale in Rwanda include four of the five major icons of the art of Black Africa, identified by Herbert Cole (1989):

* The male and female couple

* The woman and child

* The forceful male with a weapon

* The stranger or outsider

If (as Cole suggests), the image of a chief being carried is a variant of the man on horseback, then all five are present.

Each of the icons "encapsulate[s] ideas and actions of central importance in human life," according to Cole. Most relevant to the objects here, "from the armed male [comes the notion] of protection from aggressors, warfare, and sustenance from the hunt ... Strangers stand for the stimulus of novelty from the outside" (ibid.).

In the "colonial" sculptures, much of this iconography is inverted. The Belgian "stranger" may stand for the stimulus of novelty but above all he stands for command. He usurps the role of the "forceful male with the weapon," the Congolese policeman, who becomes the servant of the stranger. The male prisoner, disarmed, symbolizes the community unable to protect itself from aggressors.

A multifaceted view of power underlies the similarities and differences between "traditional" and "colonial" rule as depicted in art. Unlike Westerners, who tend to think of power as transformative--the capacity to get someone to do something--Congolese see other faces of power:

   The first of these faces has to do with
   the consumption of resources--with
   "eating" in both its literal and figurative
   senses as this term is used in
   many African languages. If one can
   "eat," one is powerful; the more one
   eats, the more powerful one is. It
   thus follows that there is a close
   correlation between the language of
   food and the language of corruption
   in many African states.... Eating
   can be more than just a physical
   activity, however. It also refers to
   sorcery and the world of other occult
   forces ... (Schatzberg 1995:55-6, see
   also Schatzberg 2001).

The power of the Belgian colonizers portrayed in "colonial" sculptures could be seen in their possessions and especially in the many instruments they used to impose their will, physically and through sorcery. These include staffs, pistols, and books.

The identification of the colonial official with the chief--suggested in the story told by the peddler Olivier--is supported by comparison of the statues themselves. A Hemba-style statue of a chief, purchased in Rwanda, has a distinctive hairdo. In a sculpture depicting a Lega chief being transported by his subjects, the chief wears a conical cap. The pith helmet similarly marks the status of the Belgian.

The Hemba chief holds a cane or staff, sign of authority passed down from the founder of the state. On the staff, a female figure perhaps "refers to the man's link to his mother's line of descent" (Roberts and Roberts 1999:9). Similarly, the Belgian administrator or commissaire de police often is shown with one or more possessions that express his power. The gun expresses the power to kill at a distance, the binoculars power to see a long distance, the medical kit power to heal.

Many of the Belgian statues depict the official holding a book, which expressed and incarnated the compiled knowledge of the whites. In Chinua Achebe's A Man of the People, the three brief words "owner of book" assign to a Nigerian politician "the ownership of the white man's language" (Achebe 1966:13). Books and writing are linked to colonialism in Tshibumba's "History of Zaire" paintings: The Portuguese navigator Diogo Cao begins the conquest by writing the name "Zaire" in his book; Lumumba frees the country by signing the livre d'or of Independence in 1960 (Fabian and Tshibumba 1996:23, 91).

The power of the Belgians could be invisible. Standing Belgian A (Fig. 5) holds a book in one hand, a stick in the other. In contrast, Standing Belgian B (Fig. 6) is shown with his hands in his pockets. Yet Olivier, showing me this statue together with Standing Belgian A, told me that B was a higher ranking official, a "general." He gave issues orally, or wrote them on paper, inside his office. Paradoxically, this gentleman's lack of visible signs of power, other than his uniform, constitutes a sign of power.

Copying and Creating

Many of Bukavu's sculptors received their training in the 1960s and '70s at a workshop founded by the Jesuit missionary Father Henri Farcy. Apparently, a sculptor trained in an academy of beaux-arts was brought in to give lessons to young men wishing to learn to carve. One of these men, Albert Manegabe, explained that his father had been a carpenter but he (Albert) had not wanted to follow in the father's footsteps because carpentry was such hard work. In addition to the workshop, Farcy also founded a shop called Magasin Likembe (likembe means "thumb piano"). The shop still exists and sells paintings, sculptures, and various other arts and crafts. The workshop no longer exists, the sculptors having gone their separate ways. Manegabe and the others filled orders, on occasion. For the most part, they selected images in a "catalogue," i.e., a large book

on African sculpture, as well as a smaller paperback book, Kings of Africa. However, they were not content to copy the image. Rather, they used it as a point of departure (interview, saxlptors Albert Manegabe and Daniel Mwangilua, Bukavu, September 23, 2001).

Songa Kaseke, who also learned to carve at the Bukavu workshop, has produced a series of sculptures depicting postcolonial political violence. Allen Roberts suggests that the Songa piece, Bombardement de Bukavu, which he purchased in Bukavu in 1976, may be connected to Tshibumba's painting Les mercenaires de Bukavu. However, the differences between the painting and the sculpture are as striking as the similarities. In the Tshibumba painting, two European soldiers occupy the foreground. Other parachutists descend from an airplane. African corpses litter the ground. In Songa's sculpture, in contrast, the mercenary figures are absent. If whites are present, they are passengers in the airplane that is dropping bombs, not paratroopers. Songa's central actors are the African victims, writhing in agony.

In a brief interview, Songa told me that he had indeed been inspired by an image. He saw a photograph of a sculpture by the Makonde of East Africa. This sculpture, which he remembered as being the work of a Congolese sculptor named Makonde, suggested to him how to express the horror of the suppression of the rebellions. After carving the Bombardement de Bukavu purchased by Roberts, he made Bombardement de Kamanyola, Bombardement du Kwilu, and Bombardement de Fizi (interview, Songa Kaseke, Bukavu, September 25, 2001). Without having seen the photograph, I suspect that the Makonde sculpture that served as a model for Songa was a version of the Tree of Life. In this sculpture, each generation of the village stands on the shoulders of the previous generation (see http://cti.itc.virginia.edu/~bcr/Bayly/Bayly6.html, for example.) If indeed the Tree of Life served as a model then Songa gives the borrowing an ironic twist, since his Bombardement statue represents a "Tree of Death."

The Bukavu sculptor is much like the urban painter or the jazz musician, in that "he develops a theme without pretending to exhaust it." Jewsiewicki's explanation of the work of the painter seems to me to apply quite exactly to the Bukavu sculptor:

   Neither the painting nor the performance
   is an attempt to surprise
   its public; instead, it re-creates what
   everyone already knows, and invites
   the participation of all present.
   The artist's imagination is limited
   to improvisation on well-understood
   themes, sometimes suggested
   by the client. Given that poor sales
   can stop production completely--since
   the painter may then lack the
   means to buy materials--these artists
   usually make numerous versions
   of themes that sell well. Such
   works are not copies, for successive
   paintings on the same subject are
   executed from memory, or from one
   original ... but usually not from earlier
   paintings by the artist.... What
   we might call copies, then, are better
   seen as successive sketches (Jewsiewicki
   1991:131-32).

Whether the theme is "traditional" or "colonial," the sculptures I am offered are not copies but improvisations and successive re-creations of what everyone knows.

Past and Present

"Colonial" sculptures represent the past in a different way than do paintings such as Colonie Belge and "Epoque Coloniale," even though the same colonial past presumably is being represented. Both art forms correspond to "Things Past" as opposed to "Things Ancestral" and "Things Present," to use the classification developed by Szombati-Fabian and Fabian (1976). Yet the oppression portrayed connects to the present (the 1970s, for those paintings). As Young explains, "the subliminal message [of Tshibumba's Colonie Belge] is certain: the artist through the medium of history is painting the present" (Young 1992:131).

But if the subject matter of the paintings is immediately the past and only subliminally the present, the paintings themselves are unambiguously contemporary. The paintings Tshibumba and other Lubumbashi artists sold door to door were barely dry. Sometimes, as Young relates, the artist would present a list of subjects, and then paint a picture to order. In the 1970s, no one claimed to be selling old paintings. Indeed, until Olivier returned from Kivu with the Nguba Colonie Belge painting, dirty and stained, I had never been offered a painting that was supposed to be old.

The "traditional" sculptures, in contrast, supposedly are from the past. The vendors who came to my house in Lubumbashi in the early 1970s claimed to be selling old sculptures from the Luba, Songye, and other peoples of southeastern Zaire, not recent products made to look old. In reality, while some may have been made in the original culture area according to traditional techniques, few if any were old (Guy De Plaen, Musee National de Lubumbashi, personal communication, 1975).

The Congolese peddler of statues and masks plays a game with his client. He claims that the objects are old, that he got them from the villages or from someone who got them from the villages. And the customer plays along, although he generally does not pay a price reflecting a belief that he is buying antiques. (See also Steiner 1994 chap. 5 on age and authenticity).

While the vendor Andre's wares all were "traditional" in style, other collections of wares for sale in Rwanda are mixed. That is, they include both a variety of masks, statues, and other objects, usually representing cultures of eastern Congo, and also "colonial" statues of various sorts, whose equivalent I had not seen when viewing collections of wares for sale in Lubumbashi in the 1970s. The latter are assimilated to the "traditional" art in that they undergo similar treatment designed to make them look old, the details of this treatment being considered secret du travail by Bukavu sculptors Manegabe and Mwangilua. (Apparently a common technique involves exposing sculptures to flame; potassium permanganate, reported by Steiner [1994] for Cote d'Ivoire, appears not to be used in eastern Congo.)

Olivier insists that his "colonial" sculptures, unlike those sold in Magasin Likembe for example, are old. He obtains them by making a long and dangerous trip to Shabunda (a Lega area in eastern Maniema). "Why would villagers have old 'colonial' statues?" I asked skeptically. Olivier explained that village carvers had made the sculptures in response to orders from Belgians. When the Belgians went away, the sculptors put the statues in storage, until such time as the Belgians would return. Now, faced with a disastrous economic situation, the village sculptors were selling the statues for whatever price they could get. I strongly suspect that this whole story is fictional and that Olivier's "colonial" wares are made in Bukavu today.

Justin Bahati, son of Manegabe, teaches science in Butare (Rwanda) but also practices his father's career of sculptor. He had no art with him when he came to my house. I asked what he had for sale and he said he takes orders. He does statuettes and masks, he said, as well as carved boxes, penholders, and salad servers. Europeans are the main customers for the masks and statues. Rwandans, he said, mainly buy salad servers. I asked if he meant that he himself made traditional-style sculptures. Yes, he knows how to make objects in the Lega, Songye and Luba styles. Then he backtracked a little: he might make the item itself, or go around to old men and see if they had something they wanted to sell. Justin insists that when he sells an antique, it is genuinely old.

What about "Epoque coloniale," I asked. Did he know about that? "Oh, you mean where they are carrying somebody?" Yes, he knew how to make those. But he didn't have any copper. He explained that normally one made the figure of the European from copper, so that he would be different from the others (who would be made from dark wood). In previous years, before the war that cut off trade with Katanga, a Bukavu sculptor would make a wooden model of the figure, then send it to Katanga to be replicated in copper.

Justin's explanation was put in terms of the artist's medium. But his answer taps into a long, complex symbolism of wealth and power in Central Africa. Copper occupied the place held by gold and silver in other regions. In Katanga, artisans known as "copper eaters" supposedly used magic to produce various objects in the red metal, including the crosses that served as currency throughout the region (Herbert 1984, Hemptinne 1926). Tshibumba's painting Grand chef Katanga des Basanga visite les mines de cuivre traditionnelles (Lubumbashi 1977) testifies to the sentiment that a Congolese resource had been stolen by the colonizer (Jewsiewicki 1991:140, 1992:152).

When the Union Miniere du Haut Katanga (Mining Union of Upper Katanga, UMHK) took over the copper deposits in the early twentieth century, it also appropriated the name imangeurs de cuivre. Forced labor was used to mine the copper and to feed the miners. Copper crosses decorated the flag, money, and postage stamps of the Etat du Katanga, whose secession (1960-63) was sponsored by the UMHK.

Even today, after years of neglect that have led to a drastic drop in production, Katanga's deposits of copper and associated minerals (cobalt, uranium) draw the attention of covetous foreigners. For the Congolese population, copper symbolizes both misery and potential prosperity. The statue of the European "man of copper" being transported by Congolese thus links past, present, and future.

Comments of the art peddlers confirm that Congolese are well aware of the connection between the portrayal of colonial violence and the present situation. Olivier and I had been discussing the "colonial" sculptures. With no prompting, Olivier reminded me that people are miserable in eastern Congo. He said that older people, who remember the colonial period, say that it was better than what they are living under now. Even if the Belgians put you in prison and beat you (referring to sculptures of prisoners), afterward they gave you something to eat. Today, people are worse off.

Memories for Sale?

Representations of the white man and his rule date back to the early years of colonial rule in Congo. However, the "colonial" genre coalesced only in the years following independence. Paintings on fabric appeared in the 1940s but the first "colonial" painting, the picture of flogging purchased by Muba, is reported in 1957. By the 1970s, a wide range of paintings dealt with the colonial experience. These were purchased both by Congolese and by whites.

Sculptures of whites began early on as well. The white man being carried in a litter, carved by a Kongo, dates to the first years of the twentieth century, as does a clay figure of a Belgian priest, modeled by a Tabwa and discovered by Roberts in a photograph. But so far as I can tell sculptural representations of the flogging of a prisoner appeared only after independence and were inspired by the paintings.

The "colonial" sculptures call into question typical categories. They are popular, political art and tourist art at one and the same time. In two graphic images--the Congolese being flogged, the Belgian being carried--the wooden sculptures capture the essence of colonial rule, as experienced by the Congolese. Colonialism, as they lived it, was slavery. Such sculptures are political art. They reflect the past political situation of the Congolese people and interpret their present situation in the light of the colonial experience.

At the same time, the "colonial" sculptures clearly are tourist art. That is, they are currently being produced to sell to outsiders, whether or not these are tourists in the literal sense. There are precious few tourists in Congo these days, and even in Rwanda they are not numerous. Many of the outsiders are teachers, embassy personnel, employees of international governmental and nongovernmental organizations, and the like. Most are Europeans and North Americans, although I was told of an Ethiopian professor buying one of the Flogging sculptures.

While these statues are tourist art, they are not what is dismissively called pirogues et palmiers (canoes and palm trees). The distinction between the subject matter of tourist art (stereotyped souvenir images suspended in time and space) and popular art (specific) may hold in some settings. Jules-Rosette argues convincingly for such a distinction in the work of Congolese exile painters in Zambia in the 1980s (Jules-Rosette 1992:44). In the case of Bukavu or eastern Congo circa 2000, the distinction does not hold. Congolese woodcarvers are producing, for sale to Europeans, sculptures that relate closely to the Colonie Belge paintings of the 1970s.

The Colonie Belge paintings, and at least some of the other popular paintings of the 1970s, were political art in that they shaped politics. "Art is a weathervane of history, and more," Vansina argues. "Art, produced by sources outside itself, expresses metaphors which in turn can lead to further cultural and social change" (Vansina 1984:213).

The point can be put more strongly still, as Edelman does:

   [A]rt is the fountainhead from
   which political discourse, beliefs
   about politics, and consequent actions
   ultimately spring. There is, of
   course, no simple causal connection
   here, because works of art are
   themselves part of the social milieu
   from which political movements
   also emerge; but there is a complex
   causal connection. Contrary to the
   usual assumption--which sees art
   as ancillary to the social scene, divorced
   from it, or, at best, reflective
   of it--art should be recognized
   as a major and integral part of the
   transaction that engenders political
   behavior (Edelman 1995:2).

The popular, political art we have been discussing falls into two temporal categories. In one, represented by the wall paintings from Faradje and the day sculptures of Zairian soldiers and party officials that Roberts saw in Kalemie, the artist portrays the present. Those were comments on the early colonial regime and on the Mobutu regime respectively, and any Congolese viewer would have understood them as such. This art told people how to think about the current situation. In contrast, the historical paintings of Tshibumba and other artists of the 1970s fall in the second category since they express the "burden of the past, history as tragedy" (Young 1992). The statues now being produced also express the "burden of the past." The burden and the tragedy have not ended; the statues, like the paintings, enable one to "remember the present" (Fabian and Tshibumba 1996). But the double function of the artworks, as lieux de memoire and as commodities, poses questions: Who is to remember, what are they to remember?

The "present" moves along. The Colonie Belge paintings indirectly portrayed oppression at their present time, under Mobutu. The "colonial" sculptures, in contrast, indirectly portray the present in which they were produced. In that present, Congo was trapped in a seemingly endless war. Eastern and northern Congo was under the occupation of Uganda, Rwanda, and Congolese "rebels" allied with them.

A thread runs through all this artwork, connecting the portrayals of various eras, executed at various moments. This is power, the power to "eat," i.e., to consume wealth. In Congolese political thought, the powerful man is rich, his wealth testifying to his possession of power, including supernatural power. Legitimate power is manifested in sharing; a chief is supposed to redistribute wealth. "White man," according to this line of thought, is a behavioral category. A Congolese who lives alone, or just with his wife, in a house too big for the two of them, is a "white man."

The Belgians, Mobutu, and the Rwandan and Ugandan occupying forces all came along and exploited Congo's mineral riches. Congolese understand "colonial" art in this sense. The vendor Justin, offering me a Standing Belgian clay figure, volunteered the observation that "he came to take our riches." The Belgians understood this; the young reporter Tintin, clad in safari, capitula, and casque colonial, thwarted a "foreign" threat to Belgium's Congolese Eldorado (Herg6 1931). Mobutu and the Rwandans and Ugandans also took Congolese riches and left the Congolese in poverty.

The white man's wealth is not just an instrument by which he exercises power, although it is that. The wealth is also a sign that the possessor is powerful. White men used their power to shape Congolese art, including "colonial" art. They recruited candidate-artists and taught them new techniques. A man who had engraved images on ivory might become a painter. A carpenter or carver of mortars and spoons might become a sculptor of statues. The white man bought or rented a space to serve as a workshop, and equipped it with necessary tools. He provided and equipped a shop from which the resultant paintings, masks, and statues could be sold. Other whites, as well as some Africans, bought these artworks to decorate their homes. But the works were distinctively Congolese.

As Cosentino reminds us, the market place "provides the motive, the inspiration, the materials, and the audience for popular art" (1987:88, cited in Young 1992:117). As Young points out, the painter Tshibumba's clientele, in the 1970s, was of two sorts: "the more modest segment of the Zairian middle class, and a faction of expatriates" (including Young, Fabian, and Fabian's next-door neighbor Turner). The power of Tshibumba's paintings "lay in their communicative link with their audience, not in their submission to a technical, specialized aesthetic" (Young 1992:118). The audience bears witness to the familiarity of Tshibumba's portrayal of Congo's tragic history by buying his paintings. Young's point regarding the power of Tshibumba's art seems to me to be valid, with the proviso that the audiences were dual. Tshibumba's appeal to his Congolese and expatriate audiences probably was rather different. I see him as a kind of Amos Tutuola of the visual arts. Like the Nigerian author of The Palm Wine Drinkard (1952), he seems to have attracted foreign interest in part because of his nonconformity to a "technically specialized aesthetic." As Biaya puts it, Tshibumba was "sous liemprise de l'esthetique traditionnelle" (Biaya 1992:163). In my opinion, much of the appeal of his work derives from that traditional aesthetic, as does the appeal of the "colonial" sculptures.

Congolese sculpture, like painting, has had a dual audience for many years. "Traditional" sculpture continued to be produced to meet "traditional" politico-religious demand, through the colonial period and beyond. But as Fabian relates, the acquisition of "curios" was a standard activity of explorer-ethnographers such as Frobenius and Torday (Fabian 1998). Some "traditional" sculptural styles apparently evolved in response to demand from generations of visitors.

In recent years, as Biaya points out (1988, quoted by Young 1992), the Congolese politicocommercial bourgeoisie found popular painting an inadequate medium of cultural ostentation. However, the bourgeois did purchase "classical" Congolese sculpture, i.e., what I have been calling "traditional" sculpture.

Expatriates have continued to constitute a major audience for Congolese sculpture and sculptures have been produced with this audience in mind. The Temps Colonial sculptures appear to be a recent example of production for this audience, but one which derives its appeal from its reflection of authentic Congolese attitudes.

Congolese popular painters drew upon a collective memory of colonization, broadly conceived. As summarized by Tshibumba, colonization ranged from the encounter between Diogo Cao and the King of Kongo in 1487, to 1959 or 1960. As Young argues, this memory reflects colonial pedagogy: "the library of historical imagery upon which [Tshibumba] draws is transparently shaped in large measure by school texts and mission versions of the Zairian past" (Young 1992:119). However the library included other imagery, considered by Tshibumba to be historical, but which many outsiders would regard as folklore. The clearest example is Simba Bulaya, the Lions from Europe, portraying Europeans who "captured Africans in the night, and perhaps ate them" (Fabian and Tshibumba 1996:49, 299).

"Popular" painters such as Tshibumba and Cheri Benga drew upon this memory or library to produce their renditions of the past. Sculptors apparently drew upon the same library to produce their three-dimensional renderings of the "colonial era," whether or not they were working from a particular painting, which might have been shown to them by a European. They also appear to have tapped into a long-standard tradition of humorous or sarcastic portrayal of the white man, dating back to the Kongo artist's portrayal of a white man in a litter and to the wall painting in Faradje, showing a white man and woman at the dinner table.

Those sculptors, like the painters, produced those "colonial" works in order to sell them to fellow Congolese or to visitors. Perhaps the single Belgian sculptures function like the colon figures of C6te d'Ivoire, of which Steiner writes that they "are interpreted by their buyers as a celebration of modern Western expansionism," akin to safari-look clothing produced by Ralph Lauren or Banana Republic; however, I doubt that many purchasers prize the flogging sculptures as "images which pay homage to the conquest of the continent" (Steiner 1994:154). Part of the appeal of the "colonial" statues lies in their commodification of Congo's tragic history. Owning the statue, one can share a bit of the artist's view of the collective memory. For me, and perhaps for other outsiders, much of the appeal of the Congolese sculptures lies in the mirror they hold up before us: Is this how we whites look, in the eyes of the Africans? Do they see us as ridiculous, as Roberts (1992) suggests? Wazungu (foreigners, white men) have been drawn into a dialectical relationship with the Congolese, acting as "mirrors to and for each other, refracting and reifying new orders of social distinction and identity" (Comaroff and Comaroff, 1997:6). The "colonial" sculptures, a hybrid form, reflect the Congolese as well as the Wazungu, defining each in terms of its relation with the other.

[This article was accepted for publication in September 2004.]

Achebe, C. 1966. A Man of the People. London: Heinemann.

Biaya, 22 K. 1988. "L'impasse de crise zairoise dans la peinture populaire urbaine, 1970-1985." Canadian Journal of African Studies 22, 1:95-120.

--. 1992. In Art pictural zairois. Nouveaux Cahiers du CELAT, 3, edited by B. Jewsiewicki. Sillery, Quebec: Editions du Septentrion.

Cole, H. M. 1989. Icons. Ideals and Power in the Art of Africa. Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press for the National Museum of African Art.

Comaroff, John L., and Jean Comaroff. 1997. Of Revelation and Revolution: The Dialectics of Modernity on a South African Frontier. Vol. 2. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Cosentino, Donald. 1987. "Omnis Cultura Tres Partes Divisa Est?" African Studies Review 30, 3:86-92.

Dibwe dia Mwembu, D., B. Jewsiewicki, et al. 2000. Memories of Lubumbashi. www.celat.ulaval.ca/franco/CAPE1/ mwembu.htm

Edelman, M. 1995. From Art to Politics: How Artistic Creations Shape Political Conceptions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Fabian, J. 1998. "Curios and Curiosity: Notes on Reading Torday and Frobenius." In The Scramble for Art in Central Africa, edited by E. Schildkrout and C. Keim, p. 272. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Fabian, J. and K. M. Tshibumba. 1996. Remembering the Present. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Hemptinne, J. d. 1926. "Les mangeurs de cuivre du Katanga." Congo 1, 3:371403.

Herbert, E. W. 1984. Red Gold of Africa: Copper in Precolonial History and Culture. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.

IRIN (Integrated Regional Information Network). (2001). DRC: Amnesty Berates Rwanda for Alleged Avuses in the East, IRIN-CEA Update 1,203, June 19. New York: United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

Jewsiewicki, B. 1991. "Painting in Zaire." In Africa Explores: Twentieth Centuiry African Painting, edited by Susan Vogel. New York: Center for African Art.

--. (ed.) 1992. Art pictural zairois. Nouveaux Cahiers du CELAT, 3. Sillery, Quebec: Editions du Septentrion.

--. 1999. A Congo Chronicle: Patrice Lumumba in Urban Art. New York: Museum for African Art.

Lumumba, Patrice. 1963. La pensee politique de Patrice Lumumba. Edited by J. V. Lierde. Paris: Presence Africaine.

Roberts, A. F. 1992. In Art pictural zairois. Nouveaux Cahiers du CELAT, 3, edited by B. Jewsiewicki. Sillery, Quebec: Editions du Septentrion.

--. 1996. "Peripheral Visions." In Memory: Luba Art and the Making of History, edited by M. N. Roberts and A. F. Roberts, pp. 211-243. New York: The Museum for African Art.

Roberts, M. N. and A. F. Roberts, eds. 1996. Memory: Luba Art and the Making of History. New York: The Museum for African Art.

--. 1999. "Anticipation and Longing: Congolese Culture Heroes Past, Present, and Future." In A Congo Chronicle: Patrice Lumumba in Urban Art, edited by B. Jewsiewicki, pp. 92-107. New York: The Museum for African Art.

Schatzberg, M. G. 1995. "The Cultural Foundations of Power and the Present Political Transition." L'Afrique dans le Monde: Actes du seminaire, pp. 55-61. Geneva, Centre de Recherche Entreprises et Societes and Espaces Afrique.

--. 2001. Political Legitimacy in Middle Africa: Father, Family, Food. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Steiner, C. B. 1994. African Art in Transit. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Szombati-Fabian, I., and J. Fabian. 1976. "Art, History, and Society. Popular Painting in Shaba, Zaire." Studies in the Anthropology of Visual Communication.

Tutuola, Adam. 1952. The Palm Wine Drinkard. London: Faber.

Vansina, J. 1984. Art History in Africa. London: Longman.

Young, C. 1992. "Painting the Burden of the Past: History as Tragedy." In Art pictural zairois, edited by B. Jewsiewicki, pp. 117-138. Sillery, Quebec: Editions du Septentrion.