In Kinshasa, the Congolese capital, groups of locals are turning mountainous piles of invasive trash into surreal costumes. The city is utterly plagued by garbage. As well as its own waste, it has to deal with tons more which is exported and dumped there by richer countries, and the unwanted byproducts generated by the industrial exploitation of Congo’s rare minerals.
When French photographer Stephan Gladieu traveled to the city’s “apocalyptic” waste sites, he discovered people finding inventive ways to draw attention to this spiraling trash crisis. Playing with the tradition of African masks, they transformed plastic containers, old car parts, flip-flops, CDs, electronic devices, and cans into wry acts of defiance.
We caught up with Gladieu to learn more about the situation in Kinshasa, how he executed this project, Homo Detritus, and what he learned about those he photographed.
VICE: Hi, Stephan. How did you come across this story?
Stephan Gladieu: I was working on a series about traditional African masks on the border of Benin and Nigeria. Historically, there are two main types of masks: Japanese, which is a fashion mask, and African, which is seen as a representation of a spirit and therefore has to cover the whole body. While I was doing this research, I saw a picture on Facebook of a young lady from Kinshasa wearing what looked to me like an African mask but made out of plastic trash. I got in contact with her, and she introduced me to a wider group.
Obviously, the garbage problem in Kinshasa is the wider context of this story.
Kinshasa is very poor and very dirty. It is an insecure city. In the center, you have the embassies and international agencies, with some shops and nice avenues. But the suburbs are mostly very poor. There’s also slums, built with almost nothing. The group of artists I was there to work with lived in a very poor suburb. There was no water—you had to collect it from outside—and a maximum of two hours of electricity per day.
The city was full of garbage. There was a river where you couldn’t even see the water because of plastic bottles. You could actually walk across the river, on the trash. There were places where the ground itself was burning because there was burning trash buried beneath. It sometimes felt apocalyptic. Not all the time, but sometimes.
What did you learn about the people who made these costumes?
That they had poetic vision and a huge capacity for resilience. There was a lot of solidarity between them, and at the same time strong tension, because of the precarity.
Why are they doing it? It gives them the feeling they are existing. The costumes draw attention and tell the story of this craziness, where you have one of the richest countries on earth in terms of national resources, yet one of the poorest in terms of socioeconomic situation. This is all because of inequity. We [richer nations] extract resources and buy materials from places like the Congo; make products that are sold in Europe, the U.S., and Asia; and then we send these products back, after use, mostly as garbage. This is the crazy business of garbage: We send our garbage there, even though they barely have the means to treat their own garbage, and yet we send more. It is very cynical; we take the resources and send back the garbage.
What’s the connection between these costumes and traditional African masks?
Traditional masks were built mostly from natural products from the sacred forest: leaves, wood, feathers. Today, they’re reinventing the traditional mask with garbage, because that’s what is on the surface of the earth in their neighborhood now. But these [garbage] costumes are not involved in any ceremonies because they are not traditional African masks and therefore don’t represent a spirit. They are mostly for artistic performance and photography.
There are lots of members of the public in the background of your images. How did they react to these costumes?
It was crazy, because when I was shooting in the street I sometimes had 250-300 people around me. Sometimes even the police came because it had caused a strong reaction. Some people were laughing, some were scared, but most were just surprised and interested to see what was going on. I tried to let life continue in the background; I never asked people to move or stop or go away. I just ask the subject to stand where I decide and then I wait.
Of the ones you sent us, which was your favorite and why?
The one with plastic containers [above]. Water was something we spoke about a lot. The water is dirty, they don’t have water in most of these areas, so they need to go with a container and get it. As such, there are a lot of things hanging around that can be used for storing, drinking, or moving water from one place to another. This mask contained a lot of humor for me, but also spoke to the problem of not having running water in your home, and desperately trying to find whatever you can drink. I think this will be the next war: the war for water.
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