July 19, 2006
By Emmanuel Mulaudzi
WITH the Democratic Republic of Congo in the news as elections loom, Johannesburg residents can find out more about the country through an exhibition on at the Johannesburg Art Gallery.
Kinshasa, the imaginary city tells the story of the decay – caused by social, economic and political factors - of a once beautiful city. Using a combination of video footage and photographs, it provides viewers with a sense of how people live in the DRC capital.
The exhibition looks at the urban landscape, which goes beyond the buildings and the infrastructure to the people, where "Kinshasa's inhabitants quite literally embody the market, the street, the garage, the church … the city", says a press release.
Kinshasa, the imaginary city "offers an interpretation of the city as mental space revealing its existence beyond the city's visible geographical and physical reality", exploring the hidden, invisible city in the minds of the people - their belief systems, their survival strategies.
The people talk
Three large screens show Kinshasa residents talking about their lives and feelings. Interviews are in French but with subtitles in English.
Many of those interviewed are older residents. One man talks of his city as a "woman" besieged by "male predators", describing how foreign countries came in search of minerals.
He explains that once the miners discovered that there were not enough minerals to make a profit, they left the city and the local people were left without jobs – echoes of Johannesburg's early mining history when people flocked to the newly found gold mines.
Video footage also depicts day-to-day activities in Kinshasa: a noisy, vibrant, city with busy spaza shops and informal vendors selling fruit and clothes.
The photographs tell another side of the story. In one series, entitled "La Semence" or "Seed", the concept of planting a seed in the here and now in the hope of reaping a harvest later on is explored. The word "semence" is often used in advertising or appears on shopfronts or church walls.
The caption says: "References to semence on advertisements for churches and shops abound in every street. Most 'miracle churches' draw ever-larger crowds while the gifts, the seeds that are sown by the believers, only continue to grow in importance."
Some of the photographs tell the stories of sections of the community. In another series, the stories of homeless children, who were forced to leave home because they were accused of witchcraft or other unspeakable miseries, are carefully documented. Their complex lives – of being paid for their skills and seeking redemption via the church and being abandoned by their families – are carefully documented.
A Congolese national, Bienvenu Ingila, who lives in Johannesburg, said the exhibition shows the real Kinshasa. Kinshasa was beautiful before colonialism "but now it is dirty and more densely populated than Hillbrow", he said, adding that there were no jobs to be found.
For more information on the exhibition, contact Tshidiso Makhetha on 011 725 3130. The gallery, on the corner of Klein and King George streets, Joubert Park, is open from Tuesday to Sunday from 10am to 5pm. Entrance is free.
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