The Department of Painting and Sculpture (KNUST), blaxTARLINES KUMASI, and Opoku Ware II Museum (KNUST Museum) are honoured to host representatives of the Congolese Plantation Workers Art League (CATPC) Ced'art Tamasala and Matthieu Kasiama from D.R. Congo to present a talk on their practice and CATPC projects such as the 'Balot NFT', the "White Cube", the "Chocolate Sculptures", the Land Reclamation and Post-plantation projects.

Mobilizing the magic of the NFT, CATPC aims to reclaim the powers of a long-lost sculpture and regain control over their community's land. The artists will describe their request for a loan of the Balot sculpture from Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, for an exhibition in their White Cube in Lusanga, Congo. They will discuss the Balot NFT, with which they hope to unleash the sculpture's forces, to buy back land, replant the forest, providing autonomy and food security for workers in one of most impoverished areas of the world.

Simultaneous translation from French to English is by Selom Kudjie assisted by Godelive Kasangati

Venue: Tech. Sec., KNUST campus

Date: Tuesday, 6th September, 2022

Time: 5pm

About the speakers:

Matthieu Kasiama (Lusanga, 1987) and Ced'art Tamasala (Likasi, 1986) are members of CATPC, – or ‘Congolese Plantation Workers Art League’, an art cooperative of plantation workers in Lusanga, D.R. Congo. Founded in 2014 CATPC, has built a practice of reclaiming hundreds of acres of former plantation land for future generations with the proceeds of their art. On that land, they established ecological and inclusive food gardens, while in the midst of that land they built a museum, the White Cube, which aims to return capital, visibility and legitimization, so that plantation worker communities can also decolonize. In 2017, the New York Times named their first solo show 'the most challenging show of the year’. CATPC is preparing a solo show for the Vanabbemuseum in 2023.