Painting Congolese history: Tshibumba Kanda Matulu

[Arecidea Kwilemie]

During a brief period between the late sixties and the late seventies, popular genre painting bloomed in the urban and industrial Katanga. Scores of artists, most of them self-educated, produced thousands of paintings (acrylics or oils on canvas reclaimed from flour sacking) for local use. Through a limited number of recurrent topics, they articulated a system of shared memories. They recalled ancestral origins, colonial history, the fight for independence, post-colonial struggles for power, and the predicaments of urban African life.

Several painters began to represent sequences of historical events, foremost among them Tshibumba Kanda Matulu who thought of himself as a historian and was able to realize, in 1973-74, a project he had been dreaming of: A complete History of Zaire in one hundred pictures and a narrative. In Remembering the Present: Painting and Popular History in Zaire, this work, as well as conversations between Tshibumba and the anthropologist, Johannes Fabian.

In his most famous work, the History of Zaïre (1973-1974), Tshibumba combined elements of traditional African storytelling with a contemporary style of urban popular art to create his own vision of Congo’s past. This vision, while personal, articulated a system of shared memory that gives an unparalleled insight into Congolese history.

A felt history

The History of Zaïre begins with the pre-colonial period of the Congo. This stage is illustrated by depictions of ‘village life’, ‘when people knew how to live’. Tshibumba’s comments testify to a respect and nostalgia for the traditional life of another era. In his paintings he returns to a mythical landscape, to a conception of Africa before colonialism.


"The black man existed since Adam and Eve. Without following the story of a religion, be it Catholic, Protestant, or Kimbanguist, this is how our Zaire existed since the days of old. And [there were] our ancestors as you see them there [Painting 1: Landscape], our ancestors. They knew how to dress. They had raffia clothes, as you see here on the painting [Painting 2: Ancestral couple]. They knew how to work. Those people by the water are working to catch fish, and in Katanga they began to make copper ingots in those times. They produced copper ingots, made copper wire, and went to sell it. They knew how to eat, to dine. they had manioc and they cooked bukari. This was our food. They knew how to build. As you see, there they built"

Alimasi, Famous painter in Kisangani in the 70 year, his painting "The battle of Kisangani" has earned him a national reputation. This scene represents the parachute of the Belgian military airport in the capital of the Upper Congo, while the rebels are trying to prevent the landing of the aircraft with metal drums on the track.

Originally from the region of Mayombe, région du Bas-Congo, Mambu works and lives in Boma (south-west of Congo-Kinshasa, on the mouth of the river). His favorite themes: "the bridge Marshal", the suspension bridge of 800 m, built on the river at Matadi, by the Japanese in the early 80s, "the difficulties of life" classic scene where we see man perched in a tree in a boa, at the foot of a river where a crocodile awaits him, while a lion patient earth.

The History of Zaire ends with paintings depicting events that took place in the early 1970’s. But Tshibumba also included paintings in which he gives a possible future for his country. He shows dreams of a new order in which social relations disintegrate and party politics replace religion.

Remembering the present

The History of Zaire looks back to the early 60’s as a time of great hope, with the end of colonialism in sight and a thriving middle class who offered some economic and social stability. Lumumba appears as a messianic figure during the fight for independence. His death foreshadows the horror of what is to come. The most poignant pictures are Tshibumba’s representations of those images which are all too familiar to us today: images of poverty, refugee camps and blue helmeted peace keepers.


Tshibumba other paintings