"The History of Zaire Series:
Lumumba in Buluo Prison"

Tshibumba Kanda Matulu was born in Lubumbashi, Congo. In the 1970s, he established himself as a painter, focusing on the Belgian colony during the time of Patrice Lumumba and other historical subjects. Tshibumba left Lumbumbashi, Congo, in the early 1980s, and has been missing since.

In the style of self-taught genre painting, Tshibumba Kanda Matulu created this series of images depicting the history of Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo). Tshibumba collaborated on this series with Dutch scholar Johannes Fabian (b. 1937) who encouraged Tshibumba to take on the immense endeavor and who recorded the artist's commentary on each painting.

Although the entire series is comprised of 101 paintings, beginning with ancestral chiefs and European explorers and ending with visions of Zaire's future, the forty-one images in this exhibition focus on the era of Zaire's independence from Belgium and the rise and fall of national hero Patrice Lumumba (1925-1961).

Tshibumba's illustrations reflect a critical and subjective point of view of historical events. He painted the scenes from memory, using a highly expressive style. The text narrates each painting and provides literal identification of the people or places involved in the scene, while symbolic motifs and imagery address universal issues of the liberation struggle.