Mondriaan Fund looks back to a memorable edition of the Venice Biennale

On November 24, 2024, the Venice Biennale 2024 came to a close. The exhibition The International Celebration of Blasphemy and the Sacred at the Dutch Pavilion was a presentation by CATPC (Cercle d’Art des Travailleurs de Plantation Congolaise), created in collaboration with artist Renzo Martens and curator Hicham Khalidi. This exhibition is part of CATPC’s ongoing commitment to liberating, regenerating, and transforming the Lusanga plantation back into sacred forests through spiritual, ethical, and economic restoration. The exhibition attracted 350,000 visitors.

A central part of the exhibition was the temporary return of Balot, an ancestral sculpture created in 1931 to protect the community from the violence of the plantation regime. CATPC secured the sculpture on loan from the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (VMFA). On March 19, 2024, Balot was welcomed back to Lusanga by CATPC and their community. CATPC believes that the return of this sculpture restores balance and rectifies past injustices. The sculpture was exhibited at the White Cube in Lusanga. This made The International Celebration of Blasphemy and the Sacred simultaneously accessible at the Rietveld Pavilion in Venice (IT) from April 20 to November 24, 2024 and at the White Cube in Lusanga (DRC).

For both the Lusanga and Venice exhibitions, CATPC created new artworks using soil from the last remaining forests around the plantation. These pieces were then reproduced in palm oil and cocoa extracted from the plantation itself.

“We strive for a scenario where the sweat and profits of plantation labor are transformed into resources to restore our community. By exhibiting and expressing our ideas in cocoa and palm oil we, CATPC, are able to buy back confiscated land, restore the forest and enable peaceful coexistence between people and nature.” – Ced’art Tamasala (CATPC)

From Venice, the artworks will travel to the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven, where they will be featured in the exhibition Two Sides of the Same Coin, on view from December 21, 2024, to March 2, 2025.