White Cube follows the process of a group of Congolese plantation workers who create art, buy back land from the proceeds, and start a museum. Artist and filmmaker Renzo Martens (Enjoy Poverty) sharpens the contemporary discussion about colonial looted art, ownership, and profit sharing with White Cube.
White Cube ©VPRO & Pieter van Huystee Film & TV
Many museums were built with profits extracted from plantations during the colonial era. When artist and filmmaker Renzo Martens (1973) is invited to screen his film Enjoy Poverty (2008) at the London museum Tate Modern, he sees Unilever logos everywhere. This sparks his interest in the relationship between art and capital. In White Cube, he investigates how many world-renowned museums were built with profits garnered from plantations. Martens travels in 2011 to a former Unilever plantation in Congo, where palm oil has been cultivated on a large scale since 1911. Here he meets the workers who labor under miserable conditions and for low wages on the land that has been stolen from them. Through an art project, Martens hopes to produce local art and generate funds for the plantation.
Using clay from the river, the plantation workers sculpt figures. These sculptures are then reproduced using 3D technology, but made from chocolate. A product made with cocoa and palm oil from Congo. With the proceeds from the art project, the workers can buy back their land and start their own plantation. To attract capital, they also build a museum, a white cube, in the middle of a Congolese palm oil plantation.
About the creator
Artist and filmmaker Renzo Martens lives and works in Amsterdam and Kinshasa. He previously made Episode I (2003) and Episode III: Enjoy Poverty (2008).
White Cube is produced by Pieter van Huystee Film & TV in co-production with VPRO.
The film was made possible with support from the Netherlands Film Fund, Netherlands Film Production Incentive, Media Fund, CoBO, VAF, Creative Europe. White Cube premiered at IDFA 2020 and was nominated for a Golden Calf this year.
2Doc: White Cube (58 min) Tuesday, November 16, 10:35 PM, VPRO, NPO 2
