🧵Drawing #AndréeBlouin (1921-1986), born 101 years ago today in the Central African Republic. She was an anti-colonial activist, pan-Africanist, and feminist who was key to the liberation movements in French-Guinea, the Belgian Congo, and other African countries.
A thread. 1/5
The lives of revolutionary women often go unrecorded – one of the reasons we began making portraits at @tri_continental was to recover our rich collective archive.
#AndréeBlouin was much more than “the woman behind Lumumba,” and formed part of DRC's first Cabinet. 2/5
Exiled to France after Lumumba’s assassination, #AndréeBlouin stayed a life-long pan-Africanist:
'I want Africa to be loved. I speak of my country, Africa, because I want her to be known... Knowing comes first, then love. Where there is knowledge, surely there will be love.’ 3/5
#AndréeBlouin's autobiography begins with: ‘As punishment for the crime of being born of a white father & a black mother I spent my early years in a prison for children…in the French Congo. The time was the dark years of colonialism in Africa.’
Today, brave young comrades in the DRC have created a new political space in Kinshasa in her honour, the #AndréeBlouin Cultural Center. Here’s an International Women’s Day event held early this year 5/5
As we speak now, dozens of Congolese youth are gathered at the #AndréeBlouin Cultural Center to celebrate the anniversary of her birth. Here's the livestream: fb.watch/hs3D0jcMSl/
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🇨🇺120 years ago today, Cuban painter #WifredoLam (1902-1982) was born. His Cantonese father did calligraphy, inspired by Confucian/Daoist traditions, mother was a Congolese descendant, and godmother, an Afro-Cuban priestess. You can say he was made in and of the Third World.🧵1/7
Over his 80 years, #WifredoLam was conscientised by the Spanish Civil War, anti-colonial struggles, Negritude, Surrealism, and the Cuban Revolution. He drew, painted, sculpted, illustrated, engraved, and gave expression to aspirations of colonised peoples. 2/7
In Europe, #WifredoLam befriended Surrealist André Breton, Communist painter Pablo Picasso, and Caribbean anti-colonial thinkers, later visiting Aimé Césaire in Martinique. In a growing anti-colonial and black consciousness, Lam turned towards his African roots in his art. 3/7
<A thread for #25November> Today is a day of revolutionary martyrs. Our chosen ancestors.
25 November, the International Day for the Elimination of Violence, marks the day in 1960 that the Mirabal sisters were assassinated in the fight to see the Dominican Republic liberated.
25 November, the day in 1994 that the Koothuparambu communist student activists were gunned down in Kerala, India.
25 November, the day that our comandante Fidel left us four years ago — defying the hundreds of attempts by Empire on his life, during his life.
<A thread to remember a feminist ancestor>
Born 4 September 1895, #XiangJingyu was a Chinese communist, politicised by the anti-feudalism of the 1911 Revolution and the anti-imperialism of May Fourth Movement.
Part of the Communist Party of China since its founding, Xiang Jingyu became the first woman elected into the central committee and headed the Women’s Bureau.
Xiang Jingyu helped build the first national women’s movement, mobilising strikes of thousands of women workers in silk and cigaratte factories, and women’s support of the great 1925 Canton-Hong Kong strike.