@inproceedings{01JK60HVPK1SSR0JN4XYQN5Y3Y,
  abstract     = {{Albert Lubaki (c. 1896 – after 1939) was commissioned to produce
watercolor paintings in the 1920s and 1930s in the Belgian Congo.
While widely known in Europe and considered one of the precursors
of modern art in Congo, his artistic practice in his own country is
discussed predominantly within academic circles. Today, almost 100
years after Lubaki produced his first paintings in the cité indigène
of Elisabethville for a young territorial agent, Georges Thiry, we are
trying to piece together the very few facts of his life and reconstruct
his biography and the socio-historical context in which he existed.
Through archival research, multi-sited ethnography (in Kinshasa,
Kongo-Central, Lubumbashi, and Kabinda), and oral tradition, we have
gathered an alternative narrative about his life.
In this paper, we will present some of the research results focusing
on Lubaki and his surroundings, situating him within the multitude of
local contexts from which he was detached by the European art world.
In doing so, his life story will be woven into a larger context of spaces,
processes, and practices. This approach constructs not a biography
in the sense of a chronological recital of facts, but a social surface
(Bourdieu 2000) – a description of “successive states of the field through
which the [life] trajectory has progressed” (302). Lubaki’s life traversed
different locales within the territory of Congo and different regimes of
governance, and his art – commodities bearing his agency but having
their own life trajectories – reached Europe, Asia, and the Maghreb.
It is important for us to analyze this variety of trajectories – both
temporal and spatial – to move beyond the commonplace description
of Lubaki as a “painter of the bush” towards a more complex and
nuanced narrative, including topics such as mobility, migration, and
urbanization. In conclusion, we will explore Lubaki’s presence in the
contemporary art world in Congo. What legacy of Lubaki remains in
the places where he lived? How do people talk about him, if at all? Is
there any interest in the phenomenon of early watercolor painting?
By examining these questions, this paper aims to achieve not only an
alternative narrative of this famous period in Congolese art history but
also a better understanding of the experiences people might have had
in the first half of the twentieth century in the Belgian Congo.}},
  author       = {{Salakheddin, Diana}},
  booktitle    = {{6th CRN Conference, Abstracts}},
  keywords     = {{Belgian Congo,colonialism,art,watercolor painting,Albert Lubaki}},
  language     = {{eng}},
  location     = {{Sharjah, United Arab Emirates}},
  pages        = {{37--38}},
  title        = {{Traversing contexts : the multilayered biography of Albert Lubaki}},
  year         = {{2025}},
}