Performance "Extract of Withdrawal", Africa Museum Tervuren, screenshot "Trial Movie Tracking". Mock-up film, December 2018 © Victor Schmitt

Presentation of the artist

Christian Botale works to create links between various fields of knowledge and thoughts of the North-South network. The architecture of the drama, the colonial traces, the emission and the reception of the current worlds. The study of instability and chaos. Christian Botale appropriates different forms of expressions and languages of life. It brings together techniques from experimental research and different mediums. He claims the actualization of inheritance transmitted by word of mouth by the South and the writings of the North. Every day, he gets up with an inexhaustible rage, to shout the aesthetic farce that runs through his organs. The modern world of machines, digital interpersonal, political, cultural, social and media feedback. It's about finding the source of my burns. To dialogue with the original practices, to bring back their substance in an electronic amplification.

ART

http://http://www.b-fies.it/2018_supercontinent2/christian_botale_molebo.html

PRESS

https://www.poly.fr/retour-par-anvers/

Model of the pirogue. wood, rubber, nails, wheels, 1m x 17 cm

© Anne Derivière

THE FILM (Synopsis)

A film, fiction of a journey, the return on board a canoe, a collection of objects, Nkisi, masks of the Congo ... A canoe leaves empty from Strasbourg to Brussels-Tervuren, to the Museum Royal of Central Africa. She is then in charge of the objects. She moves to the port of Antwerp, and berths at the port of Boma (Congo). She goes to the port of Matadi then leaves for Kinshasa. Restoration and installation of objects at the National Museum of Kinshasa. Performative actions take place during the making of the film. The canoe, the objects, Nkisi, are carved, adapted to the staging. Fiction generates the reality of the questions asked by Congolese. They talk about their heritage that must certainly return to the origin. They ask themselves questions about the survival of their visible heritage in Belgium. Is it important that these objects continue to be where they are? Do they think they are well preserved? If these objects were not deported, would they be visible? In which state ? Who do we have their status as works of art? I decide to carve my own versions, I put them at the heart of my work. I am searching for the truth between what is written in the North and what was transmitted to me by word of mouth from the South. I position myself between a memory, a tragedy around a culture. I discovered the huge collection of Congolese objects ceded to Belgian settlers in Tervuren. A nonexistent heritage in my country.

PORFOLIO

http://christianbotale.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/2015_2018.pdf

Model of the pirogue. wood, rubber, nails, wheels, 1m x 17 cm

© Anne Derivère

Studio visit residency. Live Works at Centrale Fies, Dro, Italy 2018.

© Roberta Segata

Studio visit residency. Live Works at Centrale Fies, Dro, Italy 2018.

© Roberta Segata

http:// http://www.liveworksaward.com/

Performance "Extract of Withdrawal", Africa Museum Tervuren, screenshot "Trial Movie Tracking". Mock-up film, December 2018 © Victor Schmitt

ANVERS A L'ENVERS