For the Ghent Festivities 2025, Amnesty International, in collaboration with Ghent University and the Amsab Institute for Social History, is preparing an exhibition and related activities about the human rights situation in Congo, based on artworks by Lucie Kamuswekera.
Lucie is a 78-year-old artist from eastern Congo. She embroiders images from her country's colonial past and present on jute sacks. As a child, Lucie Kamuswekera learned to embroider in the colonial school system of Italian missionary sisters. As a teenager and young woman, she experienced the twilight years of Belgian colonialism and the turbulent period of Congolese independence. The upheavals in the region in the 1990s profoundly changed her life. The start of the first Congo War in 1996 marked the beginning of years of violence and armed conflict in eastern Congo, the region where Lucie Kamuswekera grew up and lives. These events also left a traumatic mark on her life. In 1997, on his way to his fields, her husband was killed. Like many before and after her, Lucie was forced to flee and settled as a widow in the city of Goma. There she took up embroidery again, as a means of meeting her material needs and expressing herself in relation to the troubled past. She depicts not only the past but also recent political events. Her work also holds up a mirror to today's Congo, reflecting, for example, on the COVID pandemic and the ongoing violence in the province, where, among others, the rebel group M23 regularly threatens residents . (Excerpt from: Maarten HENDRIKS, Sam KNIKNIE, Gillian MATHYS, Sarah VAN BEURDEN, Lucie Kamuswekera. Embroidered Past, Imagined Future in Congo, Amsab-ISG, 2022.)
The works on display in next year's exhibition come from private collections. Currently, six creations have been pledged, but we would love to exhibit more. This is possible if people are willing to purchase one of her works below and lend it to the exhibition next year during the Ghent Festivities week (well-insured, of course). It would also be a very welcome financial support for Lucie. The works in the photos cost €450 each.
Are you interested in purchasing and lending one of her works to help make the exhibition a success? Please contact Gert Verdonck at
GERT, IRIS AND LUC for the Great Lakes volunteer team and Amnesty International Ghent region.
