The Gervanne and Matthias Leridon Collection is proud to lend five previously unseen artworks to the 2020 exhibition dedicated to the artist Freddy Tsimba, Mabele eleki lola! The earth, brighter than paradise. This exhibition is Africa Museum’s first temporary exhibition since its reopening in 2018.
Diving into Freddy Tsimba’s universe is like diving into everything that our society leaves behind: Rusty metal, beer caps, casings, machetes… waste. While you wander through the different exhibition rooms, you will discover “Encore un effort” (2011); “I’ll not give them my diamond I, II, III” (2014), and “Réveil Sommeil” (2011). You will also encounter stunning female busts, structures, silhouettes, as well as fragmented and provocative sculptures crafted from bronze, metal, earth, or cement. Each one of them conveys a unique and profound symbolic message.
Freddy Tsimba’s extraordinary thirty-piece exhibition for the Africa Museum creates an exceptional and timeless dialogue. Curated by In Koli Jean Bofane, this exhibition showcases Freddy Tsimba’s work in a completely new way.
Freddy Tsimba is an optimist, a lover of life and beauty, and a passionate artist-sculptor from the Democratic Republic of Congo. He is an active fighter for human rights, and he sculpts his country’s and the world’s chequered past with his bare hands. He is the only one who knows how to transform war and beautify violence creating a new aesthetic through sculpture. Freddy Tsimba collects scraps of metal and abandoned objects in his travels. He uses these raw materials in his work. These objects bear his country’s tragic history. Through his works, he creates a new narrative to reflect the essential questions of his fellow human beings. His art is a translation of his environment, of what he has seen, touched, and heard. He does not seek to please but to be true to himself and to express a repressed cry of pain and a message of hope. Freddy Tsimba’s art is an ode to life, a timeless and universal message of peace.