Rail, Massina 3
2009
Mixed media
Site-specific installation, National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution
Photo by Franko Khoury
For years Aimé Mpane has documented the vibrantly painted signs, shop faŤades and discarded objects he has found in urban spaces across the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). He brings these influences together for the first time in this work, which he conceived and designed for the National Museum of African Art. Named for a specific street and living quarter within Kinshasa, it examines the financial dilemmas that many Congolese face. Brightly colored shop fronts display advertisements that promote goods and wares, praise God and offer hope. Outside, street vendors use boxes to exchange money-but shoppers rarely have enough money to buy the supplies they need in Kinshasa. Mpane modified the street vendors' boxes with his trademark images slashed into the wood with an adze to underscore his empathy for his fellow Congolese, his anger at their ongoing hardships and his fascination with the inherent tension between surface and substance in a work of art. The open wall that separates Mpane's work from that of Ant—nio Ole alludes to the emptiness found in these stores, the hope that comes from dialogue and an abstract sense of territorialism in which each door is the threshold to a new land.
Rail, Massina 3 (Original sketch)
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