KU Leuven Brings Art Installation With A New Vision Towards African Heritage Objects

In the coming months, KU Leuven will be exhibiting the work of art Ange de lumière in its University Hall . The work of the Congolese artist Yves Sambu can be viewed in the Jubilee Room, shedding new light on the African heritage objects that are displayed in the same room. At the same time, the university is also working on better access to its entire ethnographic “Africa collection”.

KU Leuven owns an ethnographic collection, which consists of approximately 1500 objects: objects with an aesthetic and cultural value, but also numerous utensils. The collection’s origins date back to the early 20th century, when religious congregations and individuals active in the former Belgian Congo collected a wealth of objects. The Leuven collection continued to grow in the following decades through donations, even after Congolese independence in 1960.

Part of this collection can be viewed in the Jubilee Room of the University Hall in Leuven. Any collection acquired in the context of colonialism rightly raises critical questions and therefore also needs interpretation, in dialogue with the communities that have had to undergo colonization. With the work Ange de lumière, artist Yves Sambu expresses that point of view.


Yves Sambu created Ange de lumière in 2022 during his stay as artist-in-residence at KADOC, the Documentation and Research Center for Religion, Culture and Society at KU Leuven. The work is a reflection on colonial history and the heritage that bears witness to it. It is an extensive triptych composed of vegetable pearls from Congo. The pearls are braided together, creating a heavy curtain. With the triptych, Sambu depicts his own interpretation of Laocoön and his sons, the famous classical image that is today kept in the Vatican museums.

The artwork by Yves Sambu can be viewed until September in the Jubilee Room of the University Hall.

Conscious and transparent management
As a scientific institution, KU Leuven endorses the importance of thorough provenance research and contributes to this itself. For example, the university is working on better access to its entire ethnographic collection. An important part of the collection can now be consulted and searched through Blendeff, the online database that provides access to the scientific and art collections of KU Leuven .

“In this way, we offer more transparency about the composition and origin of our ethnographic collection, and we make the university’s colonial past accessible,” says Professor Bert Demarsin, director of the Academic and Historical Patrimony Service. “The full disclosure will take place in several phases: it concerns an extensive collection that requires the necessary research. By making this historical ethnographic collection accessible, we want to encourage all members of the university community to integrate this heritage into their activities. In addition, it is also an invitation to reflection and debate within society at large.”