In one of the harshest places on earth, on the site of a former palm oil plantation in Lusanga, Congo, we have demonstrated that art created outside traditional institutional frameworks can be transformative. This art has an extraordinary urgency and is uniquely positioned to address inequality – social and cultural – and contribute to their solutions, especially regarding environmental challenges. Building on the lessons from Lusanga, we are expanding this approach to other regions worldwide.
To ensure that the regenerative power of art reaches not only cosmopolitan city dwellers in limited artistic or academic circles, we are launching a reverse gentrification program. At its heart is a new art platform that we are building in of the Netherlands’ most disadvantaged regions in the province of Zeeland: a White Cube in Zeeuws-Vlaanderen.
This program, LEARN, DIG, BUILD, will work with Dutch communities to learn from plantation histories, dig into local socio-economic realities, and build an inclusive infrastructure for a new kind of art.