The Individual, Auto/biography and History in South Africa

The central works of Bogumil Jewsiewicki’s exhibition were fifty paintings by
Tshimbumba Kanda Matulu from Shaba province, which emerged from a complex
“cycle” of paintings narrating the “key events” in modern Congolese history. The
exhibition also included works of other Congolese artists who emulated Tshibumba’s
style. Through “stark contrasts of colour” and “heavy chiaroscuro” achieved with
industrial paints, these paintings presented powerful visual depictions of frequently
told stories, which addressed Lumumba’s political legacy. Drawing upon
photographs, newspaper reports and radio bulletins from the Mobutist period, these
popular paintings copied the “iconic image of the slain leader”, and inserted it along
with symbols of a “pen in hand, rooster head, or globe” into visualised narratives of
Lumumba breaking chains, Lumumba descending from an airplane to undergo his
martyrdom, Lumumba taking part in the signing of independence, of events in the
world of Lumumba’s populist political party, and of the meanings of Lumumba’s anti‐
colonial rhetoric. 139 The representation of Lumumba as Christ translated the story of
Lumumba into an aesthetic that turned the events of his death into a tragedy.
These paintings were works of memory, an “icon library in which images come and
go”, and should not be seen as “testament” to the truthfulness of an event or a person.
Indeed, Lumumba was depicted participating in political events, meetings and
gatherings in which he participated, and in some, where he took no part. Through the
memory work of these paintings, Lumumba was figured as a martyr “who sacrificed
his life for his people and his country”. He was painted in crucifixion images,
surrounded by Judases, and depicted with magical qualities, whose “powerful
orations” were capable of “inducing panic”. In these painted images, produced and
circulated especially at the beginning of the 1970s, “social memory constructed a
exhibition of A Congo Chronicle at Clark Atlanta University Art Galleries was accompanied by a
programme, which included lectures and panel discussions on art, politics and visual mythology, as
well as a screening of Peck’s 2001 film.
139 A Congo Chronicle: Patrice Lumumba in Urban Art (Clark Atlanta University Art Galleries flyer,
2002; Bogumil Jewsiewicki et al, A Congo Chronicle: Patrice Lumumba in Urban Art (New York: The
Museum for African Art, 1999); Elizabeth Harney, ‘A Congo Chronicle: Patrice Lumumba in
Urban Art’, Nka: Journal of Contemporary Art, No. 11/12, Fall/Winter, 2000, pp 97‐98.
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