Patrick Bongoy’s new solo exhibition, Matter, captures a timescape of his home country, the Democratic Republic of Congo, addressing the traumas it has faced through the symbolic expressionism of rubber. The exhibition consists of a series of new sculptures and tapestries crafted from red and black rubber and hessian cloth, materials which Bongoy utilises to examine the past and the present of the DRC, reflecting on the violent exploitation of labourers who harvest the material and the environmental damage that has occurred as a result.

In Matter, Bongoy examines the impact of mineral wealth, both on the environment and on the lives of the people who unearth and harvest it, touching on challenging topics of trauma, erasure, forced migration, the loss of cultures and fragmented identities.