Stitches in time: the artist chronicling the DRC’s blood-soaked history in embroidery

Artwork by Lucie Kamuswekera depicting the conflict in eastern Congo led by M23 rebels. She says there are some events she cannot make art about as she would fear for her life. Photograph: Hugh Kinsella Cunningham

She could hear the sounds of artillery. “I have no idea how I am still alive,” says Lucie Kamuswekera. When the city of Goma, in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, fell to a rebel offensive in early 2025, the 82-year-old artist was hiding at home.

• Kamuswekera, 82, stitches scenes of contemporary Congolese history on to tobacco sacks