Main Partner
CATPC is a group founded in Congo at Lusanga in 2014, whose acronym stands for Cercle d Art des Travailleurs de Plantation Congolaise. The group immediately began to create art in order to contribute, through the sale of the works, to the acquisition of lands confiscated by Unilever. In nine years of work, they have recovered 120 hectares of depleted terrain, which has then been re-cultivated to offer sustenance to the community of Lusanga and to revive the growth of the surrounding forest. The drawings of CATPC, especially those of one of its members, Ced art Tamasala, in ink and graphite, thus become channels of expression of the disasters of colonialism, while offering themselves as tangible signs of hope and resolution. The aim of the group s efforts is the reappropriation of deforested lands, and the creation of more equitable relationships between art, economics, and ecology. In 2017 the Dutch artist Renzo Martens, founder of Human Activities, together with the CATPC collective, commissioned Rem Koolhaas and his architecture firm OMA to design White Cube, a space for art that has taken the place of the palm oil plantation of Unilever. White Cube now attracts capital with art, inventing a new economic and ecological model and giving rise to the post-plantation era.
Between art and earth, I would choose both. But, if I could choose only one, I would choose the earth.
Enjoy a video conversation between CATPC (artists) and Alexander Koch (gallerist), part of the Disegni section of Artissima Voice Over