On April 21–22, a quintessential White Cube was inaugurated on a former Unilever plantation in Lusanga, 650km southeast of Kinshasa, D.R. Congo. Designed by OMA, the White Cube Lusanga — the architecture office's first museum on the African continent — attracts both the capital and the visibility needed for plantations workers to buy back land and develop a new economic and ecological model: the Post-Plantation.
The festive and solemn inauguration of the White Cube Lusanga coincided with the launch of the five-year research program of the Lusanga International Research Centre for Art and Economic Inequality (LIRCAEI). Located in the heart of the plantation system and at the crossroads of global inequality and climatological change, the research center LIRCAEI aimed to become a vector for a social and ecological shift. The LIRCAEI was a joint initiative of the plantation workers cooperative Cercle d'art des Travailleurs de Plantation Congolaise (CATPC) and the Dutch art institute Human Activities.
With the establishment of the White Cube Lusanga, the iconic modernist white cube will be recontextualized in the setting that has historically underwritten its development. In economic terms, plantations have funded not just the building of most of European and American infrastructures and industries, but also that of museums and universities. On an ideological level, the violence and brutality unfolding on one side — the plantation zones — has informed and haunted the civility, taste and aesthetics championed at the other end: the white cube museums. By colliding these two opposite poles of global value chains with each other, the White Cube Lusanga aims to overcome both the monoculture of the plantation system that exhausts people and the environment and the sterility of the white cube, a free haven for critique, love and singularity, that more often than not, reaffirms class divides.
To mark the opening of the White Cube Lusanga and its research program centered on the definition and implementation of the Post-Plantation, CATPC curated an exhibition on the interconnectedness of art, ecology and the economy. CATPC’s newest works were unveiled alongside contributions by other prominent Congolese and international artists. The exhibition served to activate the White Cube Lusanga and put it in the service of Lusanga's community.
The opening weekend featured a concert, public discussions, a film program and a ceremony celebrating the Repatriation of the White Cube.
Participating artists : Kader Attia, Sammy Baloji, Marlene Dumas, Michel Ekeba, Hans Haacke, Eleonore Hellio, Carsten Holler, Irene Kanga, Matthieu Kasiama, Jean Katambayi, Jean Kawata, Mbuku Kimpala, Thomas Leba, Jeremie Mabiala, Daniel Manenga, Mega Mingiedi, Emery Mohamba, Ced'art Tamasala and Luc Tuymans.
OMA is responsible for designing the masterplan for the LIRCAEI, including the White Cube Lusanga. The project was overseen by their managing partner architect David Gianotten. The executive architect is Arsene Ijambo, general secretary of the Association of the Architects of Congo (SAC).
The opening weekend was organized by Human Activities and CATPC, in partnership with OMA, the Ministry of Arts and Culture of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and KASK - Ghent School of Arts, and with support by the Gieskes Strijbis Fund, the Mondrian Fund, Bralima, Stichting Educatie en Cultuur and the Prince Claus Fund.
