In the forest 
The Balot sculpture was created during the so-called Pende uprising in 1931 against land expropriation and forced labor for HCB, now Unilever. To find workers, HCB agents, aided by the Belgian state, regularly kidnapped women to force men to work on the plantations. When Kafuchi, the wife of Pende chief Matemo, was raped during one of these kidnappings, it sparked the Pende uprising: the last armed uprising against the Belgian state before independence in 1960.

The first act of this resistance was the murder of the Belgian colonial officer Maximilien Balot, after which he was beheaded. A sculpture that embodies Balot was carved to subdue Balot's angry spirit and make him work for the Pende. The statue was hidden when Belgian troops searched for Balot's body, killing hundreds of people with machine guns.

The statue is now in the hands of a museum in the US. When requests for a loan at the White Cube yield nothing, CATPC finds another way to restore the statue's original function: they turn it into an NFT, which they sell for the price of a hectare of land. With the proceeds, they buy back their land. Thus, blockchain technology becomes a means for digital restitution.

A second statue that you might encounter in the forest is Plantation Monoculture (2022), by sculptor Athanas Kindendi, a member of CATPC. The work symbolizes a female plantation worker, and with her the many people who are forced into slave labor by Western companies in Congo, like the land they cultivate, which has been completely depleted by imposed monoculture. This palm monoculture, of which only Western shareholders benefit, holds people, nature, and natural diversity hostage; the palms impoverish the land and leave it barren, so that ultimately even humanity can no longer live there. It is a significant cause of the global climate crisis.

The palm tree grows out of her belly, twisting around her body, her chest, her shoulders, as if it is slowly taking over her body - the distinction between tree and woman is hardly noticeable and shows that this woman is subject to forces she cannot control.

In museum Tromp’s Huys. On Unilever’s first palm oil plantation, abandoned after 100 years of forced monoculture, CATPC creates artworks about their past and their future. With the income from their work, they buy back their depleted plantation land and restore the forests.

In Tromp’s Huys, there are several short videos that shed light on the themes of CATPC.

In the six-part documentary series Plantations and Museums, CATPC members Matthieu Kasiama and Ced’art Tamasala search for the Balot sculpture. They travel to the battlefield of the Pende uprising and to the museum with the statue of Balot in the United States, where they request a loan of the statue for their own museum. They interview key experts in the field of the Balot sculpture and postcolonial discourse, such as Ariella Aïsha Azoulay (Brown University) and Simon Gikandi (Princeton University). 

Also on display
In Podium Vlieland: White Cube (Renzo Martens, video, 2020, 79'). The film shows the origin story of CATPC and the museum they built on the plantation: the White Cube. 

About CATPC

CATPC is an art collective of Congolese plantation workers. Renzo Martens is a Dutch artist who works closely with the members of CATPC. Renzo believes that art about inequality can miraculously solve that inequality.

CATPC - https://catpc.org/home/

This program was developed in collaboration with CATPC and Human Activities.