Pascal Maitre

So people there have to be amazingly creative and imaginative. Indeed, this city, the capital of the Congo, has produced some of Africa’s finest artists: painters, musicians, sculptors and performing artists, such as the painters Cheri Samba and Cheri Cherine, the sculptor Freddy Tsimba, and Bodys Isek Kingelez with his unique architectural models, creating extraordinary cities known the world over and exhibited in leading museums.

These artists have been inspired by both the daily life of people in Kinshasa and the extraordinary traditions of the ethnic groups in the city.

These are people who have fled wars waged in the Congo over the past twenty years and who have moved into neighborhoods where, most of the time, they have stayed together, forming ethnic communities. They have brought traditions and ceremonies from their home villages, and are determined to keep them alive, teaching them to the younger generation.

As one of the elders explained to me at a ceremony for Yaka children in the Massissi neighborhood: “These ceremonies are still celebrated because we want to please our ancestors and ask for their protection. In the village, we always have the best sculptor make statues and masks so beautiful that our ancestors will be enchanted.”

Great artists in Western countries, such as Picasso, Derain, Matisse, Modigliani, Braque and Man Ray, also found inspiration in African masks and statues. I would like to quote a story which the novelist Henning Mankell told when he gave his speech in Davos. He referred to the time when he was living in Mozambique; it was in the 1980s when the country was in the grips of civil war. Mankell was walking along a path, and saw a young man who was obviously poor and hungry, whose clothes were in rags. Then he looked at his feet: the boy had painted his feet, had painted shoes on his feet. “He had come up with a way to keep his dignity.” This story could be the story of most of the people of Kinshasa.

Pascal Maitre