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How Much Does a Human Life Cost?

Genocide continues to wage in the Democratic Republic of Congo for over 30 years. Local creatives strive to build bridges with international collectives to raise awareness of the plight of their displaced communities. Mboko Lopiki (he/him), Artistic Director of Tunga Art Lab in Goma and Luanna Peterson (she/her), Co-Founder of Hawaiian platform Weaving Our Stories in Honolulu, reflect on international solidarity and celebrating expression against the odds.

Since 27 Januuary 2025, Focus Congo has been reporting on the approaching Rwandan M23 militia into the city of Goma in Kivu, eastern Congo where Mboko is based. The city has now been seized by M23. The fundraiser for the Goma Biennale is available here to donate and support Mboko and the creatives in Tunga Art Lab.


This article features in The Quick + The Brave Journal 003: ‘Advocates + Allies’ out February 2025.

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Mboko Lopiki

Artistic Director of Tunga Art Lab

Photo c/o Mboko Lopiki

Art empowers me by giving me space for expression and change – a channel and ability to imagine forward and beyond.

Art has always served me. From a personal point of view, it allows me to build bridges with and for my community while also changing the way the community understands art through the artist. 

I started to dance in 2011 and had always considered dancing an art. But it was in 2016, when I studied contemporary dance with the Busara Dance Company, that I understood that it is one of the most complex of all art forms. 

Expression and art have always been important communication tools for us to address community and socio political issues. As a Choreographer, Artistic Director of the Heartist Dance Company, I see firsthand the empowering impact of dance on our communities. It’s why I wanted to be part of Tunga Art Laboratory.

Tunga Art Lab is a space for expression that facilitates exchange between regional, national and international artists. It’s an artistic solution to the critical state of local culture here in Goma.

Photo by Lucien Kibungo

The mission is to give new life and hope to a population that has been suffering for decades. The project provides for the needs of the community, giving families access to food and clean water, medical care, clothing, shelter. We also provide access to art, expression, performance and entertainment.

One of our exchange projects in 2024 was the Social Live Performance Festival, a film screening of performance pieces submitted by dancers from around the world. The theme of the festival was ‘How Much Does a Human Life Cost?’.

Films were sent in from Nigeria, Catalonia, the United States… It creates an important platform for us to raise awareness about the current situation. 

For more than thirty years, over 10 million people have been displaced and more than 5 million have died in our region. It’s taken an eternity to see our people get back on our feet. Since the beginning of these killings, our lives no longer exist as they should.

Photo by Lucien Kibungo

This is why it is imperative for us to contact international organisations – with the decline of artistic support that our government offers, art in our region is becoming more and more restricted.

We turn to international bodies because they receive our information faster. By placing them in our exercises and projects, we empower ourselves to facilitate community exchange.

Weaving Our Stories, a Hawaii-based storytelling platform, is one of the meaningful solidarity connections we have established so far.

Briana Mimms, a US-based Dancer, Abolitionist and member of the laboratory, put us in touch with Luanna Peterson, a Community Organiser, Educator, Author and one of the Co-Founders of Weaving Our Stories.

The platform recognises that the problems faced in the Hawaiian region stem from the same issues as the war in our region. 

The solidarity from Weaving Our Stories in raising awareness of our work has created opportunities to build together, including as a Partner in the forthcoming Tunga Art Lab Biennial 2026.

We plan for this to take place throughout August 2026. The first Contemporary Art Biennial to be held in Goma will give regional cultural practitioners space to create and perform, with the aim of giving hope to the people of our region and uplifting Goma within the international art community.

With disciplines showcased during the Biennial to include Dance, Theatre, Visual Art, Music, Fashion, Gastronomy and Photography, the event includes workshops in Journalism and Tourism as well as a Sociocultural Conference.

The diversity of our local artistry opens the doors to international communities, enhances and amplifies our traditions while also offering a place of entertainment to the population of Goma through an unparalleled event.

Photo by Primo Mauridi

We’re excited to announce that we intend for the Biennial will take place 31 July – 30 August 2026 with supporters already coming forward from Europe, the UK and Hawaii. We invite interested sponsored and active allies to get in touch via our channels to find out more about exchange opportunities. 

We welcome you to be part of this groundbreaking moment to share Goma’s rich culture with the world.

Together, let’s go hand in hand to save and give hope to the Congolese people.

Luanna Peterson

Co-Founder of Weaving Our Stories

Luanna Peterson

Weaving Our Stories was co-founded by myself and Pūlama Long, a cultural land practitioner also here in Hawaii.

We worked together the Huliāmahi Alliance, a community project focused on incorporating land stewardship and indigenous values within the Department of Education at the elementary level, guided by land practitioners at Papahana Kuaola, Kāko’o ‘Ōiwi, and Paepae O He’eia.  

A cornerstone of our programming was storytelling. This is how we connected academic content with some of the socio and emotional lessons in the programing – both at our land stewardship sites and through the learning taking place in the classroom. 

We’d often talk about the function of storytelling and social justice movements in Hawaii and the strange reality of being both very diverse while communities remain isolated from one another. 

We wanted to start to use storytelling to confront the imagined boundaries between communities of colour. 

Weaving Our Stories in Honolulu

Imperialism, colonialism and occupation have used divide and conquer tactics to separate us when we often face the same kind of marginalisation, the same kind of oppressor. But it’s very hard for us to see that our destiny is connected because of these false narratives that pit us against one another. 

To address this, the four main themes of resistance the Weaving Our Stories platform focuses on are countering cultural hegemony; supporting accountability; resisting false binaries and reconstructing cultural memory.

The first effort in doing this is through the Weaving Our Stories Youth Series, a program that centered Black youth activists and supported the development of their Hawai’i-focused community impact design projects. Their work is featured in the Weaving Our Stories anthology – a collection of stories from across the world published by radical-leaning Canadian publishers, Daraja Press.

I first came across Tunga Art Lab through one of the community’s connections who put me in touch with Briana Mimms. 

An Artist and Activist, Brianna has supported Mboko’s work for a while. When helping him to start a fundraiser, she shared one of his dance videos. He conveyed a very powerful message about the sanctity of the land and the responsibility to support those impacted by displacement and violence in the Congo. 

So I reached out to him to see if he’d like to share his story with the Weaving Our Stories community. We connected Tunga Art Lab to Hawaiian, Black and indigenous cultural practitioners, activists and academics here and on the continent to share their stories and find where they intersect. 

Collaborations have grown from there including podcasts and digital Q+As to raise awareness of the ongoing genocide in the DRC and how it relates to peace and conflict throughout the world. 

We believe it’s important to show solidarity with the cause of the Congolese people because we feel it’s everybody’s responsibility to understand that the wellbeing of all of us is interconnected.

Across boundaries, identities and borders.

I would like to reshift the focus from the rights and privileges we have in this world to the idea of responsibility. That I am responsible to Mboko and that he is responsible to me. 

If we can shift the focus to responsibility, even within our conversations about allyship and solidarity, we might be able to steer away from the more performative aspects of solidarity and activism to something grounded in reciprocity and relationship. 

It goes back to this idea that everything and everyone is connected. 

While I might not be personally harvesting minerals and resources from the Congo, the phone that I’m recording this message to you on does have a direct impact on Mboko. We know that a lot of the trade and labour practices used in this industry are being carried out by the very same people – with the very same interests – who are having a negative impact in Hawaii. That is why it matters to me to show solidarity with Mboko and Tunga Art Lab.

Bigger than that, the function and form of that solidarity comes from kindness and love which are important values missing from the conversation. 

Even if no one in the world saw me doing this, even if it never made it to social media, by me just doing the right thing and caring for Mboko and his family, acting and leading with my humanity reflects his.


This article features in The Quick + The Brave Journal 003: ‘Advocates + Allies’ out February 2025.

Pre-order yours now from our shop on Ko-Fi.


To support the development of the Tunga Art Lab Contemporary Art Biennial 2026, contact Tunga Art Lab via social media. You can donate directly to Mboko and the artistic community of Goma via GoFundMe.

To find out more about Weaving Our Stories, visit www.luannapeterson.com.

Luanna has also published a children’s book, ‘Noel Beats The Blues With Good News’, a story of resilience to help children understand events unfolding from Congo to Palestine to the Mexican-US border. 100% of proceeds from the book, available to buy now on Amazon, go directly to Mboko and Tunga Art Lab.


Follow Mboko Lopiki: @roosterdancer_ 

Follow Tunga Art Lab: @talaboratoire2022 

Follow Luanna Peterson: @nourishdesoul

Follow Weaving Our Stories: @weaving_our_stories


PHOTOGRAPHY: LUCIEN KINBUNGO, PRIMO MAURIDI + C/O LUANNA PETERSON
HERO IMAGE: RESONANCE BY PRIMO MAURIDI

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