Les Aventures de Tintin en Belgique

Tintin in the Congo remains widely sold in Belgium despite its perpetuation of racist stereotypes, including the depiction of a white saviour’s efforts to ‘civilise’ ‘lazy’ native populations of the Congo. Kathleen Berthus uses the popular Tintin series as a vehicle to confront the nation’s prevailing silence around Belgian colonialism. Derived from ethnographic research, four original Tintin comics were hacked and reproduced as small books that can carry and spread multiple perspectives on Belgium’s relationship to its colonial past. The project subverts the circulation of the original comic to situate the enduring colonial patterns back into the contemporary reality of an audience of young white Belgians.