Author: Jessica Leigh Hester / Source: Atlas Obscura
When Zaire, now known as the Democratic Republic of Congo, gained independence from Belgium in 1960, a cohort of people who had grown up under the colonial regime set out to draw the future of the country.
Bodys Isek Kingelez was trying to figure out where he fit into it all. Born in the agricultural community of Kimbembele-Ihunga in 1948, he’d moved to the new capital city of Kinshasa a decade after independence. He attended university, where his coursework included industrial design. As he mulled over his career prospects, he wondered how to square them with the seismic social and political shifts that trailed decolonization.
In that place, at that moment, there was a “tremendous desire on the part of that country’s citizens to build a country, to build a nation, to build an identity for themselves,” said Sarah Suzuki, a curator at the Museum of Modern Art. Kingelez found this prospect thrilling, and he wanted in.
Civil service was intriguing. He considered a job as a magistrate, but knew that he was too reflexively judgmental to weigh evidence. Instead, he became a teacher. It was a way to shape the future of the country by helping to mold its youngest citizens, but Kingelez was “restless,” Suzuki said. He wanted to create something with his hands.
So, he did, and with a smattering of materials—paper, corrugated cardboard, twine, straws, wire, pushpins, plastic packaging, soda cans—he laid out a miniature sculptural blueprint for a city he’d like to see at human-scale.
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