Funded by a grant from the Global Arts + Humanities Discovery Theme and the Mershon Center for International Security Studies
“Njo saa nili ona batu bana kufa, njo sasa nika shona histoire ya congo”
“It is when I saw people die, that I began embroidering the history of Congo”
Lucie Kamuswekera, Goma, 2021
Lucie Kamuswekera’s embroidered observations offer insightful readings of the current conflict in eastern Congo, violence against women, international intervention and the relation between violence and the exploitation of natural resources. Now 80 years old, Kamuswekera learned to embroider in a missionary school as a child under Belgian colonialism. As a young woman, she experienced the turbulent period of Congolese independence. The upheavals of the 1990s in the Eastern Congo led to the death of her husband and her own forced escape. Resettled in the city of Goma, she began to create art as an economic and expressive response to this challenging history. Exceptional as a woman in the DR Congo male-dominated art world, Kamuswekera joins a longstanding tradition of social commentary in African popular urban art.
Associated events
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Guided tour of the exhibit
September 23, 1:30-2:30 p.m. at the Urban Arts Space -
Art and Activism panel
September 23, 3 p.m. at the Urban Arts Space
