‘Meet the Director : Renzo Martens’

The Dutchman Renzo Martens is one of today’s most controversial artists and filmmakers. He found global fame suddenly with the film Episode III: Enjoy Poverty (2008). His latest creation, White Cube, is a kind of sequel to it and promises to become just as notorious. Its release took enfant terrible Martens straight to the front page of The New York Times. On the occasion of the screening of White Cube, Martens talks to Catherine Vuylsteke at Bozar. 

White Cube shows the relationship between Western art museums and the Congo plantation system. Many such museums were built on profits from the plantations. In White Cube, the plantation workers find a way to use the concept of the 'white cube' to buy their land back from international plantation businesses and protect it for future generations. The film is an indictment of the post-colonial exploitation of Congolese workers; at the same time it punctures the hypocrisy of the Western art world.