Wreath
Facilitated by Kimvi & Anon
Black Rubber Disposable Gloves, Artist Breath
Ghent. Belgium
2018
Temporary installation placed on the public statue of Leopold II was to highlight the atrocity of Leopold II, King of the Belgians from 1865 to 1909 and, the Sovereign of the Congo Free State from 1885 to 1908. During his rule of the Congo, an estimated 2–10 million Africans died, and conditions there led to the first use of the term "crime against humanity ", responsible for the deaths of millions of Congolese while extracting the country natural resource of rubber.
The hands of men, women, and children were amputated when the quota of rubber was not met. As a consequence, the rubber quotas were in part paid off in chopped-off hands. These and other facts were established at the time by eyewitness testimony and on-site inspection by an international Commission of Inquiry (1904). Millions of the Congolese people died: recent estimates range from 1 million to 15 million deaths, with a consensus growing around 10 million.
Several statues have been erected to honour the legacy of Leopold II in Belgium. Most of the statues date from the interwar period, the peak of colonial-patriotic propaganda.
His controversial regime in the Congo Free State has motivated proposals for these statues to be removed. During the international George Floyd protests against racism (May – June 2020), several statues of Leopold II were vandalised, while tens of thousands of Belgians signed several petitions that called for the removal of some or all statues. Other petitions, also signed by tens of thousands, called for the statues to remain. As of 9 June 2020, authorities in Belgium gave way to public pressure and began removing some of the statues of Leopold, beginning with one in Ekeren in the municipality of Antwerp.