Lafleur & Bogaert create their work in the places they pass through. Their J'aime RD Congo project is built from the taux du jour, the woven polypropylene shopping bag found across the DRC, hand-painted with slogans in the register of tourism and advertising, then sewn into banners, towers, and collages that accumulate the specific histories of each location. The project has moved across the country since 2024: Lubumbashi, Kolwezi, Mbuji-Mayi, and now Lusanga.
For this chapter in Lusanga, made in close collaboration with CATPC members, Lafleur & Bogaert take the CATPC logo as their starting point: a palm tree, palm nuts, a cocoa bean and young plants. The emblem records what the plantation has produced and what the collective is building in its place. New works made in Lusanga are exhibited alongside pieces from earlier stops on the tour.
What connects this collaboration between CATPC and Lafleur & Bogaert is not just subject matter but method. Both practices start with what is already there, such as the materials, the economy, the ground. Lafleur, who descends from enslaved ancestors from the Congo, and Bogaert, a former immigration and refugee lawyer, bring a practice built on improvisation and exchange. In Lusanga, that practice meets a community that has been working the same ground for generations, and making art from it.
The exhibition is presented at CATPC's White Cube in Lusanga, on the grounds of what was once Unilever's first palm oil plantation. CATPC built the White Cube in 2017, placing an art institution on the very site whose extracted wealth has long financed museums elsewhere. The taux du jour bags that Lafleur & Bogaert carry through the DRC are made from the same global commodity economy (palm oil, copper thread, cheap manufacture) that shaped Lusanga. Shown here, they read differently than they do in Lubumbashi or Kolwezi. The logo on the bags is not borrowed imagery: it belongs to the place.
For more information, see Lafleur & Bogaert’s website.
