J’aime RD Congo

J’aime RD Congo (2023)
35 x 40 cm
Polypropylene woven shopping bag ‘taux du jour’.

In December 2023, Lafleur & Bogaert traveled to Lubumbashi at the invitation of Sammy Baloji—an award-winning artist central to DR Congo’s contemporary art scene. Their visit marked the start of preparations for the eighth Biennale de Lubumbashi.

During their stay, they were struck by the ubiquity of woven polypropylene shopping bags— popularly known as taux du jour—and chose these as the basis for a new project, presented during the Biennale’s opening weeks in October 2024.

J'aime la Biennale de Lubumbashi (2024)
35 x 40 cm – 13 x 15 inches
Hand-painted tote bags

Lafleur & Bogaert reimagined the iconic “J’aime RD Congo” bags by turning them inside out and hand-painting new messages on them. These transformed bags became the official tote bags of the Biennale de Lubumbashi. Each bag carries, on one side, a slogan collected from street interviews, and on the other, the inscription “Biennale de Lubumbashi,” establishing a direct connection between contemporary art and everyday life.

The 2024 edition of the Biennale was dedicated to the philosophy of the recently deceased thinker Valentin-Yves Mudimbe, whose intellectual legacy served as a major inspiration for this edition. As a tribute to his legacy, Lafleur & Bogaert inscribed the name “Mudimbe” on the first prototypes of the tote bag.

J'aime Mudimbe(2024)
35 x 40 cm – 13 x 15 inches
Hand-painted tote bags

In collaboration with the collective Ateliers Picha, organizers of the Biennale, the duo hand-produced around a hundred unique bags on-site in Lubumbashi. These hybrid objects — both artworks and functional bags — now circulate through the streets as visible artistic emissaries of the Biennale.

A monumental textile collage measuring 4 by 2.5 meters, made from the same materials, became one of the iconic works of this edition of the Biennale de Lubumbashi.

J’aime RD Congo (2024)
Installation view Lubumbashi Biennale
250 x 400 cm
Hand-set letters on shopping bags sewn together with copper thread.

J’aime RD Congo
THE GRAND TOUR

Lafleur & Bogaert have been unfolding J’aime RD Congo as a traveling project across the country—from Lubumbashi to Muanda, via Kolwezi, Mbuji-Mayi, Lusanga, and Kinshasa—developing a series of in situ artistic interventions that function like a living textile collage, continuously shaped and nourished by the contexts in which it unfolds.

KOLWEZI

After its launch in Lubumbashi in October 2024, the project’s first stop was Kolwezi in July 2025, at the invitation of the Sauti ya Macho Art Festival and the National Museum of Kolwezi. In this major mining center—renowned for its copper, cobalt, and uranium extraction—the duo created a 15-meter banner mounted on a hand-cranked mechanism, operating like a horizontal stop-motion film that unveiled new Kolwezi-inspired “J’aime” slogans.

J’aime BELGIQUE – INGA – KOLWEZI (2025)
Installation view National Museum of Kolwezi, DR Congo
51 x 65 cm – 20 x 25 inches
Hand-set letters on shopping bags sewn together with copper thread.

J’aime KOLWEZI (2025)
Installation view National Museum of Kolwezi, DR Congo
51 x 65 cm – 20 x 25 inches
Hand-set letters on shopping bags sewn together with copper thread.

J’aime KOLWEZI (2025)
Installation view Sauti ya Macho Festival in Kolwezi, DR Congo
51 x 180 cm – 20 x 70 inches
Hand-set letters on shopping bags sewn together with copper thread.

MBUJI-MAYI

J’aime MBUJI-MAYI (2025)
Installation view, set-up in front of the Hotel Petit Beyar, built by diamond dealer Petit Beyar.
6.8 meters tall × 45 cm in diameter
Hand-painted letters on woven shopping bags, sewn together into a tubular form and mounted on an industrial “tube-guy” fan.

In December 2025, the artists brought the project to Mbuji-Mayi, the capital of Kasai-Oriental and the country’s primary hub for diamond mining. For the Centre Culturel BUKENKA, they developed a new site-specific work that began with personalized shopping bags hand-painted with phrases such as “J’aime Mbuji-Mayi” and “J’aime Diamant,” rendered in both French and the local language, Tshiluba.

Intentionally departing from the horizontal formats of earlier chapters, Lafleur & Bogaert embraced the exuberant, camp visual language of “tube guys”—inflatable dancing figures animated by forced air and commonly associated with roadside spectacle. In Mbuji-Mayi, the tube figures are entirely handmade from the iconic taux du jour bags, transforming an everyday local object into a flamboyant, large-scale kinetic sculpture.

Tube guys trace their lineage to Caribbean artist Peter Minshall, whose inflatable dancing figures achieved international prominence at the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games.

For Mbuji-Mayi, Lafleur & Bogaert heighten the camp aesthetic by blowing locally purchased diamond dust through the structure, with the result that diamond dust quite literally snowed down the street—turning the work into a moment of excess, absurdity, and public spectacle.

The Mbuji-Mayi tube guy stands 6.8 meters tall, measures 45 centimeters in diameter, and features a remotely controlled, multicolored LED lighting system—further amplifying its theatrical presence.

Lafleur & Bogaert purchased diamond dust from an informal comptoir de diamant (diamond trading house) at the local public market. These small diamonds from Kasai-Oriental, affectionately known as Tupuishi—meaning “dust” or “sand”—were driven through their installation, with the result that diamond dust quite literally snowed down the street.

J'aime Mbuji-Mayi (2025)
35 x 40 cm – 13 x 15 inches
Hand-painted tote bags

LUSANGA

Lafleur & Bogaert will present their traveling “J’aime RD Congo” project at the White Cube of the Cercle d'Art des Travailleurs de Plantation Congolaise (CATPC) in Lusanga, DR Congo, in May 2026.