The Museum of Care invites reflection on its relationship to Renzo Martens’ White Cube in Congo, particularly their shared critique of art, colonialism, and value creation. While both projects challenge traditional structures, they diverge significantly in their approaches to power, ownership, and community engagement.
Renzo Martens’ White Cube Project – Art as a Tool for Liberation
Renzo Martens’ White Cube Project transforms the legacy of exploitation into a vehicle for empowerment. By establishing a contemporary art museum—the White Cube—on a former Unilever plantation in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Martens aimed to reverse the extractive flow of wealth. Profits from the art, created by Congolese plantation workers-turned-artists, were reinvested into the community, funding land reclamation and local development.
The project highlights the deep ties between Western art institutions—often built on wealth from colonial exploitation and slave labor—and the communities historically marginalized by them. White Cube challenges this dynamic, using art not as a symbol of oppression but as a tool for economic liberation and self-determination.
Museum of Care – A living space for survival and community
The Museum of Care in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines is a groundbreaking public art project dedicated to mutual aid, cultural resilience, and survival. Unlike traditional museums, it focuses on open-source tools, indigenous knowledge, and community collaboration, turning care into a shared, living practice. Museum of Care envisions transforming a grounded ship into the heart of this project, echoing the pirate ships of the Enlightenment as autonomous zones for social experimentation. This repurposed vessel becomes a symbol of hope, resilience, and the power of collective imagination to build alternative futures.
1. Ownership and power structures
Renzo Martens’ White Cube mirrors the language and frameworks of Western colonial projects, starting with the concept of property. His initiative to purchase land for plantation workers and place it under the control of a local art collective creates a form of community—a “nation” or “clan”—though Martens defines it as an art collective. While this provides tangible improvements (workers on his plantation earn $100 a month compared to $20 on nearby plantations), it still replicates hierarchical systems.
This approach echoes the colonial narrative where Western powers introduced “civilization” under the guise of improvement, highlighting how these dynamics persist even within progressive projects. Martens transforms alienated labor on plantations into art labor, but the system of production and value remains tied to Western art markets. Even the artists in Martens’ project, much like many in the Global North, are dependent on their work being commodified and integrated into the art world’s economy.
2. Radical decentralization: Museum of Care’s vision
The Museum of Care takes a different route by rejecting the commodification and ownership models embedded in traditional art systems. It proposes a multi-disciplinary space not centered on artifacts created solely by artists but on objects, ideas, and tools necessary for sustaining human life, rather than preserving culture as defined by Western romanticism.
This museum will feature everything from scientific advancements—like self-replicated 3D printers—to self-sufficient food and medication production methods (e.g., spirulina cultivation). Art and education are also integral, but they are positioned as tools for life reproduction rather than objects of market exchange.
The Emergency Kit Collection embodies this ethos: it’s designed so that anyone can walk into the museum, download or print its contents, and recreate it elsewhere—ideally using abandoned ships scattered across oceans, turning waste into living, breathing spaces of care and education.
3.Redefining value and breaking hierarchies
- White Cube:
Martens’ project critiques colonial exploitation but remains entangled in the global art economy, where value is created through exclusivity and market validation. While improving living conditions for some, it does so within a system that still defines worth based on Western standards. - Museum of Care:
The Museum of Care challenges deeper questions: What is culture? Who decides what holds value? What defines a museum? It rejects the idea that art and culture must be commodified, instead promoting a model where value is based on care, survival, and community resilience—detached from property, ownership, or market forces.
The goal is to break down hierarchies, removing the artificial divide between the Global North and South, and fostering horizontal connections where communities co-create and care together.
A vision beyond liberation
While both projects challenge the legacies of colonialism, exploitation, and art commodification, the Museum of Care proposes a vision that moves beyond critique and towards radical reimagination. It asks:
- What if museums weren’t about preserving objects, but about preserving life?
- What if art wasn’t about exclusivity but about accessibility and care?
- What if we redefined value, not in terms of ownership, but in terms of survival and community?
Through this lens, the Museum of Care becomes not just a critique of the art world but a blueprint for alternative futures—where art, culture, and survival intersect in radically inclusive ways.
