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Transforming Trash into Protest Art

The second largest country in Africa, the Democratic Republic of Congo has one of the richest sub-soils in the world in gold, coltan, diamonds, cobalt, oil… and yet remains the 8th poorest country on the planet.

The Congolese are among the biggest losers of globalisation. They rarely benefit from the products manufactured with the resources drawn from their country. In general, these products reappear in Africa in the third or fourth generation; at best they are outdated, but more often than not, they are no more than the waste products of industrialised countries that prefer to relocate their processing.

The DRC is experiencing an ecological scandal, but just as an alchemist transforms lead into gold, “Ndaku, la vie est belle” was born from these tons of rubbish. It was founded six years ago in Kinshasa by the artist Eddy Ekete, and today it brings together nearly 25 artists, almost all of whom were trained at the Kinshasa Academy of Fine Arts.

Painters, singers, visual artists and musicians have joined forces to denounce the tragedy of their daily lives, the wars that have resulted from them, the exploitation of women and men that stems from them and ferments the unfathomable misery that robs them of their dignity.

Originally, these artists had in common that they had no resources, no support and that they lived in a shanty town in Kinshasa, built on land filled with tons of untreated waste. Naturally, they found an abundance of free raw material in these remains.

Mobile phones, plastic, corks, everything is raw material - and yet already industrialised! - to denounce the chaos in which the country is kept.

If Congo Kinshasa has partly lost its animist and mystic traditions under the pressure of Catholicism and colonisation, the artists of the collective “Ndaku, la vie est belle” return to the traditional source of the African mask.

"L'ubriachezza è un male!" (1973)

ヤマハ　DX7 II 工場　1987年