The Martyrs of the Union Minière du Haut Katanga at the Stadium Formerly Called 'Albert...

Made: Lubumbashi, Haut-Katanga Province Democratic Republic of the Congo. This work depicts the massacre of striking mineworkers in Lubumbashi at the order of the Belgian colonial government on December 9, 1941. The artist critiques the institutions complicit in the colonial system: Belgium (represented by the flag), the church, the mining company, the colonial governor (with arm raised), and the Congolese soldiers in the colonial army. Following independence in 1960, a market for narrative painting developed among urban Congolese who were employed in the mining industries and living in new, Western-style homes. Tshibumba responded with a series of history paintings, including this one, reflecting on the violence and disruption of Belgian rule in the Congo.