DISCUSSION:
"CONFLICT ART IN THE CONGO: Rebellion, Occupation, and Return – A Talk and Photo Exhibit of Gbadolité Airport"
Thursday, October 17th, 2024
5PM @ The Bernard and Anne Spitzer School of Architecture, CCNY, 141 Convent Ave, New York, NY 10031- Room 124
(Entrance to the building is at 135th Street and Convent Avenue. Please bring a government ID to enter.)
Join Dr. Tatiana Carayannis (Leader-in-Residence, The Moynihan Center, City College of NY, and Global Affairs and Technology Advisor, Institute for Advanced Study) and Dr. José Mvuezolo Bazonzi, Professor, University of Kinshasa and Coordinator, Groupe de recherche et d’études stratégiques sur le Congo (GREC) for a discussion about the photographic exhibition "Conflict Art in the Congo: Rebellion, Occupation, and Return."
Years of violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) have shaped the country's landscapes, leaving behind destruction but also revealing visual traces of the past. These traces provide both insights into the lives of the former combatants and visual representations of the conflict itself. This photography exhibition explores inscriptions left by combatants during the First and Second Congo Wars at Gbadolite Airport, once a symbol of President Mobutu's luxury and power in then-Zaire. Between 1995 and 1999, successive and often opposing state armies and rebel groups occupied the airport, leaving behind charcoal inscriptions—names, drawings, religious texts, military boasts, and philosophical quotes—on its walls.
The exhibition, featuring 20 photographs, offers insights into the soldiers' experiences, desires, and attempts to memorialize their presence in combat zones. The deeply personal inscriptions speak to individual experiences and testify to war, power, subversion, and memory. Written in multiple languages including French, Lingala, English, Swahili, and Arabic, the etchings reflect the diverse groups involved—Congolese, Ugandan, Rwandan, Chadian and more. Although the 1999 Lusaka Ceasefire Agreement officially ended the war, 25 years later, the legacies of violence remain deeply etched in Congolese landscapes and lives, showing the human elements—and human toll—of war.
Photographs from "Conflict Art in the Congo: Rebellion, Occupation, and Return" will be on display at Maysles Documentary Center in October.
