“If a museum can create a whole economy around it in London or in New York City, then it could do the same thing on the plantation,” a member of a Congolese art collective said. “The goal is to change this reality that has been imposed on us for decades.”
Martens’s anxiety about the civic utility of his work grew acute.
It was Martens who suggested that the members of the C.A.T.P.C. make sculptures that would then be reproduced in chocolate—a luxury good wrought from local toil. As they molded and scored and slipped, Hellio remembers, discussion often turned to Martens himself, who visited regularly with a cameraperson to film “White Cube.” “We needed to explain what Renzo was doing—and also question it,” she said. “It doesn’t mean that everyone understood at the same level.
The C.A.T.P.C.’s exhibition in Queens opened in 2017. Though a critical success, the show disquieted many viewers. Ruba Katrib, its curator, attributes the uneasiness surrounding the C.A.T.P.C. to a suspicion that the members “are being misled, or that their sentiments are somehow inauthentic because they aren’t a hundred per cent self-generated.
Among the works on display were a horned creature choking on a man who symbolized greed, a bearlike monster standing in a pool of small fish meant to signify his financial debts, and a female plantation worker buckling under the weight of the palm nuts she carried. Two artists, Philomene Lembusa and Huguette Kilembi, were dunking scraps of cloth in water and tenderly daubing them on a large sculpture whose creator described it as being “about a man sucking the intelligence out of a woman.
The introduction of new frictions makes it tempting to blame Martens for sowing discord that did not exist before. But in mounting an art project that appears to masquerade as development work—or is it development work that masquerades as art?—Martens both compels criticism and inoculates himself against it.
Tamasala said that Martens’s involvement with the C.A.T.P.C. was undeniable. He later used several words to describe Martens’s role—“collaborator,” “bridge,” “partner”—but he said that it was “unacceptable to say that Renzo is the only one.” He called the relationship an “exchange,” adding, “We are not his pupils.” But Martens “is a victim of this, too,” he specified. “Every time something interesting happens, people assume it’s Renzo. It’s not his fault.
Martens was finishing a series of six short videos documenting Kasiama and Tamasala’s attempt to secure the loan of a small wooden sculpture, made in Congo, depicting Maximilien Balot, a Belgian colonial officer. His killing, in 1931, not far from Lusanga, sparked a revolt of the Pende people, hundreds of whom were subsequently killed by gunfire.
He lit another cigarette and continued, “I encountered what you could consider, if you’re ignorant—whatignorant, to some degree—‘traditional rural villages.’ ” Martens spoke of thatched huts, manioc patches, a lack of consumer products. “You could consider it natural,” he said. “You could think, This is just how people live here.” Impersonating his naïve former self, he went on, “It’s sad, sure, but the children smile when they see you.
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