The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (VMFA) approves Temporary loan Request by Artist Collective CATPC

CATPC requested the temporary loan of Balot in anticipation of the exhibition in the 2024 Dutch National participation at the International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia in collaboration with Dutch artist Renzo Martens and curator Hicham Khalidi. The sculpture is expected to be on display in Lusanga to the public from April 20 to November 24, 2024, parallel to the Biennale di Venezia.The sculpture has been part of the VMFA collection since 2015. The statue was created after the Pende Revolt of 1931 by a Kwilu Pende artist and was initially intended as a power object to harness Belgian Colonial Officer Maximilian Balot’s angry spirit. It was used as a force for protection against the plantation regime. For CATPC, given the current conditions on the former Unilever plantations and the strategies of resistance of the communities today, the return of this sculpture, even on a temporary basis, is of great significance.
 
It has long been CATPC’s wish and that of their community that the ancestral sculpture will travel back to Lusanga to be ritually reunited with the region’s notables, traditional chiefs, current and former plantation workers, children, women, men and other Earth-beings. CATPC believes in restoring balance and correcting past injustices once the sculpture held sacred to their community is displayed at the White Cube museum in Lusanga. It will allow their community to physically and historically reconnect with their history and their resistance, to recover the sculpture’s meaning and purpose and to express “a shared heritage for all humanity that traverses the world” (Ced’art Tamasala, CATPC).  
 
Ced’art Tamasala on behalf of CATPC: “We at CATPC are part of a new generation of plantation workers that is seeking, proposing and trying to find sustainable answers to the long-standing questions that are the key to the liberation of plantations. The return of Balot focusses our energy and strengthens our cause. Ultimately, by restoring the balance and correcting past injustices, the return of Balot will allow us to continue to buy back the land that was taken from us by colonial forces, it will enable us to abolish forced and destructive monoculture and to plant, regenerate and nourish back into existence our sacred forests.”
 
“The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts is delighted to partner with CATPC for this important exhibition,” says VMFA’s Director and CEO Alex Nyerges. “The sculpture’s appearance in Lusanga will be profoundly meaningful to the people in that region. The loan of a wooden sculpture from an American museum’s collection to a museum in the Democratic Republic of the Congo is also of historic significance, and we hope it will inspire a new era of collaboration and partnerships between museums on both continents.”

Main Image  :Chief's or Diviner's Figure Representing the Belgian Colonial Officer, Maximilien Balot, circa 1931, Unknown artist (Pende, Democratic Republic of the Congo), wood (possibly Alstonia Boonei) with metal repair staples. Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Aldine S. Hartman Endowment Fund, 2015.3. Photo by Travis Fullerton © 2015 Virginia Museum of Fine Arts