Belgisch Congo Belge
© Tuur Flup Marinus

PROJECT

Belgisch Congo Belge (2015)

In a series of miniature paintings Tuur and Flup Marinus copy their complete stamp album ‘Belgisch Congo Belge‘ in oil paint, page by page. The work consists of a highly esthetic range of images, an explosion of colours arranged in a play of recurrence and difference. The series bears witness to different histories and tales: colonialism and our relation towards it, the falling into disuse of postals and stamps, childhood memories, obsessive or escapist forms of philately and pictorial art…

The fascinating and impermeable esthetics of the work, fragile and almost monumental at once, can be read as a symbol of our difficulty to relate to the Belgian colonial history in a profound, non-superficial way.

The publication of the paintings in the Art Paper Collection has been presented during wpZimmer’s OpenHouse (January 2017).