Though Faustin Linyekula has always preferred people and their stories to objects, his encounter with a statue from the Lengola tribe in New York led him to seek out its origins more than ten thousand kilometres away. From this introspective journey to Banataba emerged a duet with Moya Michael: an investigation of memory and the power of objects in relation to museum strategies, against the background of the complex history of the Democratic Republic of Congo. How can communities in the Congo reconnect with their past, which has been pillaged and disseminated throughout Europe? What does an object tell us when it is moved into a museum? What does it reveal in the eyes, body and mind of the person looking at it?
Presented in co-realization with la Ville de Marseille – Musées de Marseille. With the support of Onda - Office national de diffusion artistique.
Banataba
Faustin Linyekula
Kisangani
In an electrifying duet with the dancer Moya Michael, Congolese choreographer Faustin Linyekula retraces the history of a Lengola statue at the Metropolitan Museum in New York: a journey that takes him back to the village of his maternal grandfather, Banataba, on the banks of the River Congo.