via the Institute for Human Activities.Randy Kennedy writing in the NYTimes
Until this week, Mathieu Kilapi Kasiama, an illiterate palm-nut cutter and sculptor from an impoverished region in the Democratic Republic of Congo, had never left the area, let alone flown in an airplane. And until recently, Mr. Kasiama had never tasted chocolate, the medium for his sculpture, made from the cacao beans that were a prime export during Belgium’s brutal rule of Congo and the country’s exploitation by Western companies.More hereThe other day, at SculptureCenter in Long Island City, Queens, on his second day in New York City and bundled up against an unfamiliar chill, Mr. Kasiama walked through an exhibition of work by artisans from his hometown, Lusanga, made of so much chocolate you could smell it. Mottled-brown solid-chocolate sculptures, some life-size — including a phantasmagoric 2015 bust by Mr. Kasiama titled “Man Is What the Head Is” — lined the institution’s floor, representing more than two years’ work by the Congolese Plantation Workers Art League, a new collective whose work is being shown in the United States for the first time. (The SculptureCenter show continues through March 27.)
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