Feature: Belgian pavilion at Venice biennial focuses on African colonialism

For the 56th edition of the Venice biennial, Belgian artist Vincent Meessen and curator Katerina Gregos have decided to open one of the oldest permanent pavilions to international guest artists. A rather radical choice since Belgium traditionally sends national artists to represent the country in a solo or duo show.

A mix of twelve artistic visions and practices are exploring the question of colonial modernity. Borrowed from a lost play by art critic Andre Frankin, the title "Personne et les autres" (People and Others) is affiliated with artistic movements such as "Lettrists" and "Situationist Internationals" that have been influential both in Europe and Africa.

Indeed it is when Meesen discovered protest lyrics written by Congolese situationist artist Joseph M'Belolo Ya M'Piku that Meessen had the idea to organize the Belgian pavilion around mutual exchanges. The purpose is to question the Eurocentric idea of modernity by examining a shared avant-garde heritage. Breaking the simplistic visions of a one-sided documentation of European history by focusing on intellectual cross-pollination.

In an exclusive interview with Xinhua, Meessen expressed his willingness to explore new ways of thinking of both colonial modernity and the idea that the art biennial, by it's very structure, inherently "opposes" nations in an artistic competition. This very dense exhibition presents a sum of different research-based practices. Meessen reinterprets this in a musical piece entitled "One.Two.Three" the protest song written by Joseph M'Belolo.

Mathieu Kleyebe Abonnenc explores the ambiguity of power relationships by photographing details of bronze statues in French Guyana of Victor Schoelcher, a French abolitionist who sought to end slavery in France's overseas territories. Abonnenc shows how the body language of these sculptures blurs the boundaries between desire, dependence and exploitation.

James Beckett's "Negative Space: A Scenario Generator for Clandestine Building in Africa" is an automated storage machine that points out the exploitation of the resources that fuelled Western industrial development and its corollaries efficiency and speed.

With "M'Fumu", Elisabetta Benassi honors Paul Panda M'Fumu Farnana, a Congolese Pan-African activist, by building a replica of a tramway shelter with bones of African animals. The reference is to King Leopold II, who had a whole new tramway line constructed for the 1897 Universal exhibition so that visitors could reach the Palais des Colonies (Palace of Colonies) in Brussels. The tramway line is still in use.

For the Belgian Pavilion, Patrick Bernier and Olive Martin created a new way to play chess turning the traditional Black-and-white dichotomy on it's head. In the "echiquete", when a piece is captured it produces a new black AND white piece. The game challenges traditional oppositional game strategy and suggests a hybrid view of the world.

"The parrot's tail" of guest artists Tamar Guimaraes and Kasper Akhoj almost resuscitate the work of South African painter Ernest Mancoba, a founding member of the avant-garde movement CoBrA which was active in the late 40s, early 50's. Their five short fables tread the fine line between humanism and anti-humanism, the dualism at the heart of Mancoba's overlooked presence in CoBrA.

Maryam Jafri highlights in "Getty vs. Muse Royal d'Afrique Centrale vs. DR Congo" the exploitation of public images for profit by exhibiting photos of King Baudouin and President Kasavubu on the day before the Democratic Republic of Congo's (DRC) independence from Belgium in 1960. The images raise questions about visual heritage ownership and preservation.

The work of Adam Pendleton is a fictional piece of what Dada's work might have looked like had he been Black. Pendleton's intention is to juxtapose historical references to reinscribe them into the present.

Sammy Baloji's work "Societes secretes" exhibits copper plates that depict ritual scarification, a practice that Belgium forbid in colonial times in DRC. These symbols of indigenous identity are drawn on the bodies of black labourers that are still unfairly exploited in the mining of the copper.

Meessen confessed that his attitude towards this heavy past was neither political nor contemplative. On the contrary, his focus on the subject is constructive: "Being constructivist is trying to reconstruct a problem and it is doable via art."

The artist said it was important to work on this legacy since it is still very vivid. The DRC and it's resources still attract people from around the world and one could fear that history could repeat itself with new actors coming in.

If Meessen acknowledges the business colonialism trends that are already visible in the DRC today, he nevertheless recognizes some important differences, being the willingness of newcomers to mingle with the local population, learn their language, live in the same neighborhoods, send their children to the same schools, etc.

"In a few years," Meessen concludes "we'll assist in cultural mixing and new forms will surge out of these exchanges, this is precisely what we try to emphasize in our exhibition." Endit