White Cube

VENUE: Ciné Utopia, 16, avenue de la Faïencerie, L-1510 Luxembourg

A film by the artist Renzo Martens

79 min, colour
Languages: Lingala, French, English
Subtitles in English and Dutch

as part of the festival’s “Cartes blanches & Artistic collaboration” series

Visitors to the temples of modern art in major cities as New York, London, Berlin, Dubai, or Cape will be familiar with the white cube gallery space.  But when one arises in the middle of a Congolese palm oil plantation, the effect is deeply disorienting. Furthermore, it draws attention to the often-overlooked ties between colonialism and the art world, for example, through the multinationals that now proudly sponsor these museums often built with the profits of the plantation. 

Building a museum at a former Unilever plantation in Leverville in Congo is part of artist Renzo Martens’s unorthodox plan to jump-start the local economy. Former plantation workers make sculptures that are reproduced in chocolate, and then successfully exhibited in New York. The Congolese people, most of whom earn a dollar or less a day, use the profits from this successful exhibition to buy back the land confiscated from them.

This documentary sees Renzo Martens continue on from Enjoy Poverty (2008), in which he encouraged impoverished African people to use photography to exploit their own suffering. On that occasion however, the local population earned nothing from their efforts. This new film documents an unprecedented attempt to reverse the flow of capital and use the privileges associated with the art world to bring about real change.

You can buy tickets here