When the Dust Unsettles: Art, Extractivism, and Ecocriticism in Lubumbashi, Democratic Republic of the Congo

Lubumbashi is the mining capital of the DRC. Since the height of the colonial mining industry in the early 20th century, artists from the region have proposed alternative ways of engaging with the landscape and its mineral abundance, while critiquing the colonialist and capitalist circuits of global exchange and consumption of resources extracted from the Congo. This history of art and extraction in Lubumbashi, as told by the artists themselves, offers an ecocritical warning against the perpetuation of cycles of extraction today, as the Congo is a critical source of raw materials for renewable energy technologies.