Congo Art Works is a book with two identities. First, it is part of the series Collections of the RMCA, which introduces readers to the wide range of collections at the Royal Museum for Central Africa (RMCA) in Belgium. In this case, the focus is on the museum's collection of so-called popular paintings from Congo. Sometimes also referred to as urban or international art, the term is generally understood to refer to nonacademic paintings produced for both local and international audiences in the Congo, comprising mostly figurative paintings that provide some form of social and/or political commentary on past and present. The boundaries of this category of work are porous: For some it includes work created in more institutional settings, like Le Hangar, an art academy in Lubumbashi, for example. The time frame also tends to shift: Some include drawings and paintings from the 1930s, although most scholarship focuses on...

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