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AWB 082-3317 7922

Sven Augustijnen

installation, 2012

The starting point for Spectres is the murder of Patrice Lumumba a few months after his election victory in the Congo in 1960. For TRACK, Augustijnen sought in vain for the tree against which Lumumba was shot. It had probably been chopped down to make charcoal. In the Citadel Park (Ghent), Augustijnen sets up an installation in which this charcoal – an indispensable source of income but also a symbolic remnant of the tree – is transported by bicycle, a ‘typically’ Congolese means of conveyance. Augustijnen deliberately located this installation near the ‘Moorken’. This small black sculpture on top of artificial rocks in the Citadel Park dates from 1888 and is a reminder of the time when the Congo was still Leopold II’s private pleasure garden. The ‘Moorken’ portrays the Congolese boy Sakala, whom the pioneer Lieven Van de Velde brought back to Belgium in 1884.

AWB 082-3317 7922 has been on display at:

SMAK Gent, (BE) Oct 30 2021–Mar 6 2022 Middelheimmuseum Antwerp, (BE) May 29–Oct 3 2021 SMAK Gent, (BE) Mar 16–Sep 29 2019 Les Brasseurs Liège, (BE) Sep 20–Nov 17 2018 Jan Mot Brussel, (BE) Nov 17 2012–Jan 19 2013 Fiac Paris, (FR) Oct 18–Oct 21 2012 TRACK Gent, (BE) May 12–Sep 16 2012