November - December 2025
TRACER
Residency and Presentation at Enough Room for Space, BE & Ateliers Picha, Lubumbashi, DRC
TRACER is a collective that wants to expand current investigations around the status of art objects by giving voice to the artefacts at the heart of their artistic research. Since 2023, Panel nº 8 has joined the group (Emmanuelle Nsunda, conservation specialist and writer, Esther Mugambi, performance maker, Emily Hardick, historian, Jesse van Winden, researcher and coordinator, Nizar Saleh, fillmaker, Sarah van Lamsweerde, interdisciplinary artist, Victoire Karera Kampire, filmmaker) to trace a line of thoughts between the African continent and Europe and to question the conditions of artistic production under the influence of colonial powers.
Video still by Raoul Carrer
Panel no 8 is both a relic of and portal to the Belgian Congo in 1956. It was one of 33 set paintings made by Congolese artist Mwenze Kibwanga for Changwe Yetu, a large folkloric stage production and film directed by Belgian director Jean-Marc Landier and commissioned by the Union Minière du Haut-Katanga. The show toured through Congo in 1957 and Belgium in 1958 and was seen by more than 10.000 people. The performance and the painting acted as both colonial propaganda and a record of the artists’ navigation of an authoritarian regime.
At the end of 2025, Tracer will continue their work with Panel nº 8 as a portal of healing and reflection, with our research partners Institute of Colonial Culture at Enough Room for Space and Ateliers Picha in Lubumbashi. Part of their collective travels to DR Congo to develop their research paths further, to present work-in-progress in a video-installation at the Park Hotel Lubumbashi and to livestream exchanges between this special location and Enough Room for Space in Brussels.
In these live-moments, Panel nº8 contemplates a possible return to its place of origin. Cultural actors across continents share questions and conversations around themes of extraction, conservation and restitution. These interventions will include Congo-based as well as Europe-based cultural actors.
