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The installation by the architectural office Traumnovelle presents a chronology of materials, mainly coming from CIVA collections, testifying the Congolese presence in international exhibitions during colonial times starting from Antwerp Universal Exhibition 1885, the year of the birth of the « Congo Free State », until the Brussels World Fair of 1958, the last event in which Congo was presented as a colony. These colonial sections were a legitimization of colonialism itself. To convince visitors of the civilizing mission of colonialism a large emphasis was placed in the presentation on “progress”, as imported in the colonies. Progress encompassed religious, educational, cultural upheaval of the indigenous population but also stood for the modernization as implemented through technology that represented the advance of the western world itself. An exotic setting however remained crucial for appealing to the general public. Between 1885 until 1958 human zoos were organized in the frame of the exhibitions, with reconstructions of Congolese villages crowded with natives in indigenous garb. Although controversial and discussed even at that time, they were nevertheless the ones that made the success of the Tervuren exhibition in 1897. From 1894 the Ethnographic rooms also became an almost recurrent form of display.

Architecture, Colonial --- Traumnovelle (Firm).

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Congo Style presents a postcolonial approach to discussing the visual culture of two now-notorious regimes: King Leopold II's Congo Colony and the state sites of Mobutu Sese Seko's totalitarian Zaïre. Readers are brought into the living remains of sites once made up of ambitious modernist architecture and art in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo. From the total artworks of Art Nouveau to the aggrandizing sites of post-independence Kinshasa, Congo Style investigates the experiential qualities of man-made environments intended to entertain, delight, seduce and impress. In her study of visual culture, Ruth Sacks sets out to reinstate the compelling wonder of nationalist architecture from Kinshasa's post-independence era, such as the Tower of the Exchange (1974), Gécomines Tower (1977), and the artworks and exhibitions that accompanied them. While exploring post-independence nation-building, this book examines how the underlying ideology of Belgian Art Nouveau, a celebrated movement in Belgium, led to the dominating early colonial settler buildings of the ABC Hotels (circa 1908-13). Congo Style combines Sacks's practice as a visual artist and her academic scholarship to provide an original study of early colonial and independence-era modernist sites in their African context.

Modernism (Aesthetics) --- Art and state --- Architecture and state --- Art and society --- Architecture and society --- Kinshasa (Congo) --- Buildings, structures, etc. --- Architecture --- Architecture and sociology --- Society and architecture --- Sociology and architecture --- Art --- Art and sociology --- Society and art --- Sociology and art --- State and architecture --- Arts --- Politics and art --- State and art --- Cultural policy --- Education and state --- Aesthetics --- Social aspects --- Human factors --- Government policy --- Kinshasa, Zaire --- Kinshasha (Congo) --- Kinshasa (Zaire) --- Ville de Kinshasa (Congo) --- Ville-Province de Kinshasa (Congo) --- Leopoldville (Congo) --- Art, Colonial --- Architecture, Colonial --- Art, Congolese (Democratic Republic) --- History --- History. --- Political aspects.