Congo’s "Papa Machete" sculpts life out of death

KINSHASA (Reuters) – It takes a moment to realise that the sculpture, depicting the curve of a pregnant female form, is constructed from tens of thousands of used bullet casings. Freddy Tsimba fashions his works from the objects that mean the most to him – often those found lying around in his home country of Democratic Republic of Congo. Given Congo’s past – brutal colonisation, dictatorship and successive conflicts which killed millions – the 44-year-old artist has found no shortage either of materials or inspiration. …