Conversation between Aimé Mpane and Maxime de Formanoir: AfricaMuseum reopening Tervuren, Belgium

When asked about the new exhibitions at the AfricaMuseum, Aimé Mpane admits to not having "really grasped the sense of the layout nor what the message was supposed to be." The artist has nonetheless been familiar with the museum since his arrival in Belgium in 1994. "The first thing I went to see was the Museum of Tervuren because at the time, I didn't know our 'traditional' art well, and I was interested to see how it would be displayed. I was impressed by the sheer quantity of such things held by the museum. I was especially attracted to 'tribal' arts. For me, this first visit was a discovery, for I had never before seen 'real' things of the sort. In the Royal Museum, I was in the presence of 'real' Congolese patrimony. I had asked myself many questions about this art during the days that I was pursuing my studies of art in the Congo. Mobutu had launched his politics of 'a recourse to authenticity.' As soon as he did, we were all curious about what happened prior to [Belgian] colonization. I wanted to understand, for we had never had classes on 'l'art nègre.'1 We had courses on Western art from Prehistory to Marcel Duchamp, but that was all."

Learning of the project to integrate contemporary artists into exhibitions after the AfricaMuseum's renovation, Aimé Mpane was at first cool to the idea but then changed his mind and, participating in the competition, he went on to win. "I wanted to make something that went farther than the polemics of the museum." As he adds, "with my work [New Breath or the Congo Bourgeoning, Fig. 20], I wanted to create something hyper-positive that would lead to light, create something that would bud and then blossom, and so present Congolese people in all their dignity." More or less satisfied with the institution's beginning to shed its old skin and take first steps toward decolonization, the artist nonetheless calls for such processes to continue.

Aimé Mpane's work is situated in the grandiloquent rotunda of the museum, under a cupola struck with the monograms of Léopold II, King of the Belgians. At the center of the rotunda one finds the five-pointed star of the old Congo Free State created in marble marquetry and topped by the royal crown where there once stood a bust of the king sculpted in ivory (see Arnoldi 2005: 180, fig. 1; Wynants 2003: 148, fig. 1). Until the Royal Museum closed for renovation, imposing plaster statues by Herbert Ward [depicting alleged Congolese "savagery"] stood on the peripheries of the rotunda (Arnoldi 2005: 183, fig. 3), but they have now been removed to an underground chamber with other sculptures emblematic of colonial [dis]regard of Africa. Aimé Mpane suggests that an artist might intervene in this place of relegation to transform its accumulation into an archival installation telling it like it was—and is.

20.

Nouveau souffle ou le Congo bourgeonnant [New Breath or the Burgeoning Congo] (2016), sculpture in the Great Rotunda by Aimé Mpane, wood and gilded bronze, Coll. RMCA, Tervuren, inv. 2017.7.1.

Photo: © Philippe de Formanoir, 2019

Niches of the same majestic rotunda are occupied by sculptures in gilded bronze or copper (Arnoldi 2005: 180). They were conceived by Arsène Matton, Frans Huygelen, Paul Du Bois and Godefroid Devreese (Arnoldi 2005: 180–82). Others were made by Ernest Wynants and Oscar Jespers, which also glorified Belgian colonization of the Congo (Arnoldi 2005: 184). Decades later, a figure in bronze by Arthur Dupagne has been installed there, as well as plasters by the same sculptor acquired by the Museum after the Independence of the Congo (Arnoldi 2005: 184). None of these works has been retired from its location, much to his regret. "I proposed, in a bit hare-brained (farfelu) way, I admit, that all these should be melted down to recover the metal from which they were cast to...