Embroidered Past, Imagined Future: Lucie Kamuswekera and the Violence in Eastern Congo was a timely presentation of images created by artist Lucie Kamuswekera (b. 1944). On view at The Ohio State University’s Urban Arts Space from September 19- November 18, 2023, the solo show featured Kamuswekera’s work documenting the history of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and illustrating contemporary conflict in the eastern part of the country, where the artist lives. Trained to embroider by Italian missionaries in what was then the Belgian Congo, Kamuswekera’s art subverts the original colonial intentions for the skill, which aligned with European constructs of gender roles and expectations of domesticity. Instead, it serves as a visual record of her lived experience and her nation’s history, and a means of envisioning the future.1This iteration of Embroidered Past, Imagined Future was curated by OSU Associate Professor of History and African American and African Studies Sarah Van Beurden. The project was originally conceived in collaboration with Maarten Hendriks, Sam Kniknie, Gilliam Mathys, and Van Beurden, who worked together on the initial installation at the Amsab-Institute for Social History in Ghent, Belgium, on view from November 2022 to March 2023. The US venue, Urban Arts Space, is a 10,000-square-foot experimental gallery and performance art space designated for OSU faculty, students, and local artists that opened in 2008. Housed in the historic, gold-certified LEED Lazurus Building in downtown Columbus, the gallery is situated about two miles south of the main university campus and is free and open to the public.The exhibition was installed in two large areas within Urban Arts Space: one interior room dimmed to allow for a video projection and one exterior-facing room lined with large windows, which offered abundant natural light. The show featured ten artworks: eight images made of recycled thread embroidered on burlap sacks and one made of recycled wool on fabric by Kamuswekera, as well as one painting by fellow Congolese artist Tshibumba Kandu Matulu. The exhibition also included a short film by TD Jack Muhindo featuring Kamuswekera speaking about her embroidery and vocation training young artists.In the first room, visitors encountered a video of Kamuswekera in her workshop speaking about her life and artistic practice (Fig. 1). In the film, she shared that the impetus for her work was a desire to document her lived experience and the history of DRC. Kamuswekera explained her desire to train a new generation of artists to continue the work of making Congolese history visible through art and talked about taking in destitute children from the streets of Goma and teaching them embroidery skills. The room also contained introductory wall text, a platform holding the exhibition pamphlet, and two embroidered pieces: one an autobiographical record of the artist’s life, and the other a triptych of needlework samplers titled ABC, which features the Latin alphabet and Arabic numerals. The label text explained that Catholic missionaries employed sampler projects like these to teach basic stitches and embroidery techniques. The second room contained the remaining seven images embroidered by Kamuswekera and the painting by Matulu, Belgian Colony (Colonie Belge 1885 1959) (Fig. 2). Van Beurden’s inclusion of Matulu’s work was an insightful complement to the embroidered works on view, successfully drawing connections to Congolese popular painting of the 1970s and 1980s without shifting focus away from Kamuswekera’s corpus. Although light levels for textiles and paintings on view for long periods are typically restricted due to conservation recommendations, the two-month duration of the show meant the exhibition could profit from the daylight available in the main gallery space.To create the images, Kamuswekera sews together repurposed burlap sacks to form a base for her embroideries. The natural fibers of the burlap serve as a neutral-colored backdrop for the vibrant hues of the embroidery. Kamuswekera’s distinctive use of text in her images offers viewers clues into the historical events depicted. Her meticulously composed, medium-scale works are distinctive because of the saturated primary and secondary colors and the subtly stylized figures placed within the pictorial arrangements. The pieces in Embroidered Past, Imagined Futures looked especially strong when displayed on the gallery’s stark white walls. The industrial-style interior at Urban Arts Space, consisting of exposed ductwork and concrete floors, juxtaposed with the carefully hand-crafted art further emphasized the labor-intensive, human touch imbued within each piece.While much of Kamuswekera’s embroidery depicts historical colonial violence, several pieces highlight the lingering effects of exploitation and corruption that are evidence of the ongoing impact of the colonial period. One such work is Evil Destruction of the National Park of Virunga (Destruction méchante du par national de Virunga) (Fig. 5). In the undated piece, Kamuswekera renders human figures, vegetation, and animal life in her signature brightly colored threads. The cheerful hues create a visual dissonance when used to depict scenes of ecological devastation. A felled tree is evidence of illegal logging decimating Virunga’s forests, distraught-looking animals evoke the widespread issue of poaching, and individuals placed throughout the composition look to be engaged in mining, armed conflict, and migration due to displacement, which is emphasized by the map-like placement of the names of multiple geographic markers in North Kivu. While the imagery is less overtly violent compared to other works in the exhibition, it is still a powerful reminder of Kamuswekera’s dedication to documenting her lived experience and DRC’s complex history through her art.The accompanying exhibition publication, written by the aforementioned collaborators and edited by Van Beurden, included images of all works in the order they appeared in the exhibition, in addition to label text, artistic and historical context, and information on the artist and her workshop. The outdated map of DRC found in the introduction included just eleven provinces rather than the twenty-six provincial subdivisions established in 2015. Additionally, the map is the only instance when didactic material listed Kamuswekera’s home country as “Democratic Republic of the Congo” rather than “Congo,” as it appeared elsewhere, which visitors may have confused with the neighboring Republic of the Congo. The 29-page color pamphlet was designed by Urban Arts Space intern Juliet Pintos, published by OSU, and made available in the gallery free of charge.Embroidered Past, Imagined Futures was on view at a pivotal moment, as it coincided with renewed global awareness of the ongoing war in DRC, due in part to several books recently published on the exploitative extraction of minerals, presidential elections held in December 2023, and several social media campaigns organized to raise consciousness about and reveal connections between neocolonial violence in DRC and other parts of the world. (Aptly, the exhibition on view concurrently with Embroidered Past, Imagined Futures was titled Iran: Deciphering Violence and Resistance.) Public programming for Kamuswekera’s show included an opening week panel on art and activism in which speakers engaged in a roundtable discussion about using art as a tool to effect change on local and global scales. Dr. Terron Banner of Urban Arts Space moderated the talk, and participants included retired OSU professor and artist Dr. Ike Newsum, Maroon Arts Group founder Marshall Shorts, Columbus-based artist Amina Kassim, and Dr. Sarah Van Beurden.It is critical to underscore the significance of a solo exhibition featuring art that, up until recently, was denigrated as “folk” or “craft” by a woman artist nearing 80 years old, and it feels especially meaningful considering Kamuswekera’s desire to be remembered as an artist. Aside from Ndebele painter Esther Mahlangu, it is challenging to recall Black women artists of this generation from African countries who have had solo exhibitions outside the continent. Embroidered Past, Imagined Future: Lucie Kamuswekera and the Violence in Eastern Congo offered a compelling look into the life of a woman artist in the Democratic Republic of the Congo who is passionate about telling her own story, committed to educating the next generation of artists, and intent on raising awareness about recent history in DRC and the ongoing violence happening today.
Rachel Dixon Kabukala (Thu,) studied this question.