Location: CIVA, Brussels, Belgium
Date: 2021-2023
Programme: Installation
Client: Twenty Nine Studio & CIVA
Status: Completed
Team:
Traumnovelle (architects)
Photography: Filip Dujardin
Congolisation is the contribution to the exhibition and research initiated and curated by Twenty Nine Studio & CIVA.
Traumnovelle
Congolisation, 2023
The installation by the architectural office Traumnovelle presents a chronology of materials, mainly coming from CIVA collections, testifying the Congolese presence in international exhibitions during colonial times starting from Antwerp Universal Exhibition 1885, the year of the birth of the « Congo Free State », until the Brussels World Fair of 1958, the last event in which Congo was presented as a colony. These colonial sections were a legitimization of colonialism itself. To convince visitors of the civilizing mission of colonialism a large emphasis was placed in the presentation on “progress”, as imported in the colonies. Progress encompassed religious, educational, cultural upheaval of the indigenous population but also stood for the modernization as implemented through technology that represented the advance of the western world itself. An exotic setting however remained crucial for appealing to the general public. Between 1885 until 1958 human zoos were organized in the frame of the exhibitions, with reconstructions of Congolese villages crowded with natives in indigenous garb. Although controversial and discussed even at that time, they were nevertheless the ones that made the success of the Tervuren exhibition in 1897. From 1894 the Ethnographic rooms also became an almost recurrent form of display.
The majority of the architects who designed the congolese sections, Like Henry Lacoste, Victor Horta, Paul Hankar, Joseph Caluwaers, etc.. never traveled to Congo, but imagined a native Congolese architecture drawing from elements of Congolese and African material culture filtered through a European eye. Differently, René Pechère who designed the “Jardin Tropical” for the 1958 exhibition, gathered a precise study of the species that he collected in Congo which could adapt to the Belgian Climate.
Through the installation titled Congolisation - a world that recalls the distortion of the word “colonization” - Traumnovelle offers us a unique overview on never-seen documents - including historical drawings, plans, articles, photographs and postcards - highlighting the influence of Congo on Belgian Architecture and early century modernism. In a display that recalls those of classical archival storages - like the one in the underground of CIVA’s Archive - the materials are articulated in a counter-timeline which brings to the front a trajectory for a possible alternative future questioning narratives that for long time has solidified a subaltern visions of the “other” to support the construction of national identity.
