Patrice Émery Lumumba, the first democratically elected prime minister of the Democratic Republic of Congo, was assassinated on January 17, 1961, six months after the country had gained independence from seventy-five years of Belgian colonial rule on June 30, 1960. Lumumba was murdered directly by the Belgian government and Congolese rebels with the indirect help of the United States and the United Nations. In the context of the Cold War, Lumumba, who had intended to nationalize Western mining interests in Katanga, was perceived as a threat to the United States and its allies. His body was subsequently exhumed and dissolved in sulfuric acid, allegedly supplied by the Belgian mining company Union Minière du Haut Katanga, denying the Congolese a grave to mourn.The assassination of Lumumba and the disappearance of his body has led to a proliferation of his image across the arts, making up for this physical absence—so alleges Matthias De Groof, a film scholar who conceived and edited Lumumba in the Arts. De Groof contends that Lumumba has taken on “an imaginary afterlife in the arts” as “his project remained unfinished and his corpse was never buried” (p. 7). The book is accordingly not centered on Lumumba as a historical person, but rather how he is represented in the arts. His image has appeared in painting, photography, poetry, music, film, theater, and literature. De Groof describes the book as “an iconography of Lumumba … a study of how Lumumba's image has been written by the arts” (p. 7). He refers to “iconography” as both the variety of depictions of Lumumba as well as the production of him as an “icon” (p. 7). By studying the iconography of Lumumba, De Groof proposes to explore the role of the arts in the construction and destruction of his memory, as well as the ways in which the past is reorganized in the present through images.Richly illustrated, the book is the first substantial English language publication to consider the representation of Lumumba across the arts. De Groof's collection builds on Patrice Lumumba entre dieu et diable: Un héros africain dans ses images (1997), edited by Pierre Halen and János Riesz, which explored the beatification and demonization of Lumumba in textual and visual representations of him, as well as A Congo Chronicle: Patrice Lumumba in Urban Art (1999), edited by Bogumil Jewsiewicki and based on an exhibition organized by him around the image of Lumumba in Congolese popular painting at New York City's now closed Museum of African Art. These two publications and the exhibition appeared in a decade that witnessed a surge of interest around Lumumba, including the appearance of other books, such as A la redécouverte de Patrice Emery Lumumba (1996), edited by Mabiala Mantuba-Ngoma, and biographies on him—for example, the two volumes by Jean Omasombo Tshonda and Benoît Verhaegen. This flurry of activity was due to the wane in control of President Mobutu Sese Seko, who had attempted to suppress Lumumba's legacy after declaring him a national hero in 1966.With a total of twenty-five contributors, including artists, filmmakers, and academics from a variety of disciplines, Lumumba in the Arts comprises new essays and interviews as well as the reproduction of older material, such as a conversation between Johannes Fabian and Congolese artist Tshibumba Kanda-Matulu from Fabian's 1996 book, Remembering the Present: Painting and Popular History in Zaire, and parts of Karen Bouwer's 2010 book, Gender and Decolonization in the Congo: The Legacy of Patrice Lumumba. While the title of De Groof's book, Lumumba in the Arts, suggests a definitive survey, it actually offers a range of examples from across the arts. More could have been said by De Groof about the criteria for selection and the scope of the book. If iconography involves the production of culturally specific meaning, Lumumba in the Arts draws together various geographies, from the Congo to Haiti and Belgium. Coherence is not De Groof's aim, as he explains: “The ambiguity arising from the contradictions between the many contributions to the book is not an undesired side effect of a collective undertaking, but is instead its essence” (p. 11). As a broad survey, Lumumba in the Arts offers an invaluable starting point for anyone interested in representations of Lumumba and his endurance across the arts.The book is divided into two parts. De Groof describes Lumumba as a “locus of memory” (p. 9), and Part 1 of the book, “Lumumba in Historiography: From Bête Noire to Beatification,” accordingly examines the historiography, or the collective historical memory, that informs his iconography. Part 2, “Iconography of Lumumba,” turns to different art forms—including cinema, theatre, photography, poetry, comics, music, and painting, as well as a special category on public space—as their own sections. Many of the essays in the collection consider the intermediality of Lumumba's image—for example, the ways in which his personage was conveyed visually through photographs or the reworking of photographs and newsreel footage in cinema and painting. To this end, I found the book's separate parts and sections to create unnecessary boundaries between the different art forms that do not actually exist; rather, these mediums inform one another in the creation of an iconography around Lumumba. Moreover, there are references to photographs of Lumumba throughout the book and yet, in the photography section, there is only one essay, downplaying its significance, both to Lumumba and to the artists and filmmakers for whom these photographs act as source material.The first part of the book, “Lumumba in Historiography,” consists of five chapters, opening with a contribution from Isabelle de Rezende. De Rezende examines photographs of Lumumba that circulated in the mass media of the late 1950s and 1960s, exploring his transformation from young évolué to self-assured statesman. She considers the way these images project Lumumba beyond his death to other places and times, providing an afterlife. Next, Jean Omasombo Tshonda explains how Lumumba became synonymous with independence in the Congo, a symbolism that was mobilized by subsequent presidents, such as Mobutu (1965-1997) and Laurent-Désiré Kabila (1997-2001). Alternatively, Pedro Monaville turns to the work of Dutch artist Tom Küsters to reflect on questions around the writing of history raised by Lumumba's dramatic trajectory, specifically the ways in which power shapes archives and the narratives of postcolonial histories. Building on the symbolism of Lumumba as a martyr, Christopher L. Miller analyzes the use of the past conditional in writings on him. These texts that speculate on what Lumumba “would have done” create a virtual reality in which he lives on in glory. In the final chapter of Part 1, Elikia M'Bokolo responds to prompts provided by De Groof and Julien Traddaiu, offering a Congolese perspective on the global beautification and martyrization of Lumumba.Comprising eighteen chapters, the second part of the book turns to the different art forms, beginning with a substantial section on cinema. De Groof considers representations of Lumumba across cinema with examples from Europe, Africa, and Russia, including Raoul Peck's Lumumba: La mort du prophète, Balufu Bakupa-Kanyinda's Le Damier, Papa National Oyé! and Aleksei Speshnev's Black Sun. Drawing from Jacques Derrida's concept of hauntology, De Groof argues that Lumumba operates in these films as a specter who reminds us that decolonization has not been realized. The next chapter comprises an interview with Peck, whose two films on Lumumba—the documentary film, Lumumba, la mort du prophète (1991), and the more Hollywood style feature film, Lumumba (2000)—are mentioned throughout the book. The focus on Peck continues in the following chapter with Karen Bouwer, who, after viewing Lumumba several times upon its initial release, was prompted to ask: where are the women? This prompt culminated in the publication of her 2010 book, Gender and Decolonization in the Congo, which explores the roles of women in Lumumba's life. Bouwer builds on this previous research in her comparative analysis of gender in Peck's two films. Rosario Giordano subsequently analyzes portrayals of Lumumba in Italian cinema, which vary from racist colonial stereotypes to a critique of his non-violence. The section ends with Congolese filmmaker Balufu Bakupya-Kanyinda interviewed by De Groof about his docudrama on Lumumba and the role played by cinema in laying him to rest.Subsequent sections attend to Lumumba in theater (Piet Defraeye), photography (Mark Sealy), poetry (Mathieu Zana Etambala) and comics (Véronique Bragard). These chapters are followed by three longer sections on Lumumba in music, painting, and public space. A highlight in the painting section is an interview conducted by De Groof with Belgian artist Luc Tuymans and South African artist Marlene Dumas, both of whom have engaged with the photographic culture surrounding Lumumba in their paintings. In 2000, Tuymans painted a portrait of Lumumba for his series Mwana Kitoko, based on the Belgian King Baudouin's 1955 visit to the colony and the chief protagonists involved in the Congolese movement for independence. The series was shown at the Belgian pavilion at the 49th Venice Biennale in 2001 amidst the resurfacing of colonial memories in Belgium and the revelation of the country's complicity in Lumumba's assassination, thanks to Ludo De Witte's book, The Assassination of Lumumba (originally published in Dutch in 1999 and translated into English in 2001). In comparison to Tuymans, Dumas reworked a photograph of Lumumba's wife, Pauline Opango, leading a bare-breasted mourning procession through the streets of Léopoldville after her husband's murder, in a 1982 collage and again in two 2013 paintings. The latter were created for a joint exhibition with Tuymans, countering the absence of women in his series on the Congo.While much scholarship positions Lumumba in the international context of the Cold War, Lumumba in the Arts creates a successful balance between his portrayal in the Congo and his global reach. Returning to the music section, Léon Tsambu considers the representation of Lumumba in Congolese popular music from the 1950s and 1960s as well as more recent examples over the past two decades. Alternatively, opening the section on public space, Pierre Petit discusses the global circulation of Lumumba's image on stamps, coins, medals, and postcards from around the world. Petit reminds us that the heroism of Lumumba was international before it was Congolese. In the following chapter, Julien Truddaïu examines the portrayal of Lumumba in Belgian colonial propaganda. The next two chapters offer a counterpoint to the discussions throughout the book on Lumumba's statue in Kinshasa by turning to Belgian public space. Robbert Jacobs contemplates the presence or absence of Lumumba's name on city maps and road signs, while Piet Defraeye takes a rhizomatic walk in a park in Ghent, considering Belgian artist Sven Augustijnen's bike installation on the murder of Lumumba alongside a memorial for the heroic adventures of the brothers Van de Velde in the Congo Free State. De Groof ends the book with an epilogue that starts with a visit to Lumumba's memorial site in Shilatembo illustrated with photographs taken by Congolese artist Georges Senga. Arguing against the belief that the production of icons removes individuals from history and politics, De Groof concludes that Lumumba's iconography repoliticizes his political legacy as his image is continuously exploited by a variety of actors.The edited collection does incredibly well in terms of bringing together contributors from around the world, most notably Congolese voices. However, out of the twenty-five contributors, there are only four women. Apart from Bouwer's chapter, there is an absence of discussions around gender in the iconography of Lumumba. This is not to say that gender is solely the concern of women, but there is a notable silence on this subject both in terms of the contributors themselves and the subjects discussed. For example, the book's back cover is illustrated with a painting by Congolese artist Jean-Claude Lofenia, which depicts a dynamic Lumumba in the foreground, while in the background a woman with voluptuous breasts watches on in admiration, fulfilling the psychosexual dynamics of the male gaze. Excluded from the map of Africa which she simultaneously holds, the woman operates as decorative cipher to the faces of male Congolese political leaders depicted on the continent. In the introduction, De Groof states, “Lumumba has won a place among political icons like Malcolm X, Che Guevara and Mandela” (p. 9)—but who exactly can be an “icon” across the arts, and who supports these men becoming “icons” only to disappear from view? If there is an excess of visual material around male political icons, Dumas's 1982 collage, Three Women and Me, recuperates their occluded wives. Reproduced alongside the conversation between her and Tuymans, Three Women and Me features drawings of women whose husbands were assassinated or had been political prisoners: Betty Shabazz (the wife of Malcolm X), Winnie Mandela, and Pauline Opango Lumumba. If Lumumba stands as an emblem for the continued need for decolonization in the Congo, and if the oppression of Congolese women across several postcolonial regimes is rooted in Belgian colonial rule, then scholars must be more critical about what it looks like to apply this praxis of decolonization to their academic practice.