Cercle d’Art des Travailleurs de Plantation Congolaise (“CATPC”)

Cercle d’Art des Travailleurs de Plantation Congolaise (the Congolese Plantation Workers Art League, or “CATPC”) makes art to generate global awareness about the lives, conditions, and similar colonial legacies carried on the backs of contemporary plantation workers around the world. CATPC uses the revenue generated by their art to rebuild local depleted forests— destroyed in order to accommodate plantations— for the benefit of the local community and the land’s natural ecology. The educational content in CATPC’s art highlights the nuanced historic and present-day positions of plantation workers. By transforming plantations (essentially, dilapidated ecological zones) back into forests, the local community becomes self-sustainable and food-secure. Biodiversity levels increase, important natural carbon sequesters are revived, and some of the effects of climate change can be, at least locally, mitigated.

Art should be regarded as the primary driver leading to these positive labor-related and ecological results: autonomous and resilient communities, and the restoration of the sacred forest lands. With the income generated from their art, in just one decade, CATPC has bought back 500 hectares of formerly desolate plantation land, where they continue to develop regenerative agriculture. In 2024, CATPC won the S+T+ARTS Grand Prize Africa and was listed on ArtReview’s Power 100— a prestigious annual ranking of the hundred most influential people in the arts.