Using handmade needles and thread, Lucie Kamuswekera has recorded the decades of conflict she has lived through in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The 82-year-old artist, born in 1944 in Lubero, North Kivu, was taught to sew by Italian nuns at her convent school. Now, with needles fashioned from scrap metal, she stitches contemporary history onto cloth sacks, creating a unique archive of more than 70 pieces that vividly depict scenes of violence and upheaval.
Her works include the 1961 murder of Patrice Lumumba, the DRC’s first prime minister, the brutal colonial era of the Belgian Congo, and the second Congo war, which left an estimated 5 million civilians dead between 1998 and 2003. Kamuswekera’s art is deeply personal, reflecting her own journey of displacement. When she married a trader, she moved to his village of Kibirizi, but conflict forced the family to seek refuge in Goma more than 20 years ago.
It was in Goma that Kamuswekera began stitching pictures of contemporary events after witnessing a military truck full of corpses. She took a small shopfront as a studio in the Kyeshero neighbourhood. In the early 2000s, her husband was seized by an armed gang from Laurent Nkunda’s CNDP rebel group, tortured, and died within a month. Today, her family helps in her studio, and her great-granddaughter, Divine Kyetia, annotates drafts and negotiates with clients.
The M23 rebels, backed by Rwanda, began their campaign in late 2021, and hundreds of civilians were killed during the siege of Goma in January 2025. Kamuswekera says her work has been limited by the occupation, as she fears for her life if she publishes certain stories. Nevertheless, she remains in Goma, committed to transmitting knowledge through her tapestries, ensuring the stories endure even if social media and the internet disappear.
