Sammy Baloji
Decolonialism is a theme that often appears in the work of Sammy Baloji, raised in Lubumbashi (Democratic Republic of Congo, formerly the Belgian Congo and Zaire), a center of colonial problems related to resources. He addresses the dematerialization of the landscape and the delocalization of precolonial social systems through colonial action. Baloji’s film Aequare. The Future that Never Was (2023), shown as part of a larger installation in the Belgian pavilion in the Architecture biennial in Venice 2023, mixes colonial-era promotional reels about farming and mining in his native Congo with contemporary footage of similar practices. The film shines a light on the ecological destruction colonialism has caused to the world’s second largest rainforest (around Yangambi). We get to go back in time and see the vision of a future from the colonialists’ perspective in and around the Yangambi Agricultural Center, in combination with newly shot footage of obsolete colonial buildings occupied by Congolese agents and workers.
In several works, Baloji has shed light on and re-reads the impact and traces left by the colonial mining in the province of Katanga, rich in raw materials in the Democratic Republic of Congo, be it cultural, industrial, or architectural. The gap between yesterday and today is not so wide, considering today’s economic imperialism that reinforces the power relations of yesterday.
His recent exhibitions include K(C)ongo, Fragments of Interlaced Dialogues, Palazzo Pitti, Florence (2022) and Beaux-Arts de Paris (2021); Sammy Baloji, Other Tales, Lund Konsthall and Aarhus Kunsthal (2020); Congo, Fragments d’une histoire, Le Point du Jour, Cherbourg (2019); A Blueprint for Toads and Snakes, Framer Framed, Amsterdam (2018); Sven Augustijnen & Sammy Baloji Museumcultuur Strombeek (2018); Urban Now : City Life in Congo, Sammy Baloji and Filip de Boeck, The Power Plant, Toronto and WIELS, Brussels (2016-2017), and Hunting and Collecting, Mu. ZEE Kunstmuseum aan zee, Ostend (2014). He has recently participated in the 35th Bienal de São Paulo (2023), the Architecture Biennale of Venice (2023), the 15th Sharjah Biennial (2023), Sydney Biennial (2020), documenta 14 (Kassel/Athens, 2017), the Lyon Biennial (2015), the Venice Biennial (2015), the Photoquai Festival at the Musée du Quai Branly (Paris, 2015).
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