Sammy Baloji

Sammy Baloji (1978, Lubumbashi, Democratic Republic of Congo. He lives and works between Brussels, Belgium, and Lubumbashi) participated – in collaboration with The Recovery Plan, Florence and Art Hub – in the methodological Entrance of the Palazzo delle Scienze and in the redesign of the atrium of the Collections of African Arts and Cultureswhere the following works are exhibited: Fragments of Interlaced Dialogues, 2017 – … Copper Negative of Luxury Cloth, Kongo Peoples; Democratic Republic of the Congo, Republic of the Congo or Angola, Seventeenth-Eighteenth Century (fig.98) (2017); Fragments of Interlaced Dialogues, 2017 – … Copper Negative of Luxury Cloth, Kongo Peoples; Democratic Republic of the Congo, Republic of the Congo or Angola, Seventeenth-Eighteenth Century (fig.18), (2017); Geological and mining map of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (2006), supplied in response to the artist’s request, copyright Royal Museum for Central Africa, Tervuren, (2005); Gnosis (2022); About the Moon and the Velvet (2022). As in Baloji’s other projects, the artist’s research focuses on the presence of African objects from pre-colonial times in European ethnographic collections and how this is intertwined with colonial history and its contemporary legacies. Starting with this first phase, Baloji is continuing his research on a series of objects from the wunderkammer of the Jesuit Athanasius Kircher, which comprises the founding nucleus of the prehistoric and ethnographic collections in the Museo delle Civiltà, which date back to the 16th century.

Since 2019, Baloji has been engaged in artistic research for a PhD entitled Contemporary Kasala and Lukasa: Towards a Reconfiguration of Identity and Geopolitics at Sint Lucas, Antwerp. As well as being awarded the Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres, Baloji has received numerous other scholarships, prizes and awards, most notably at the African Photography Encounters in Bamako and at the Dakar Biennale. He also won the Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative in 2014. Since 2018, Baloji has been teaching at the Sommerakademie in Salzburg, and he was artist-in-residence at the French Academy in Rome-Villa Medici in 2019-20. Baloji also co-founded the Rencontres Picha/Biennale de Lubumbashi in 2008. His recent solo exhibitions include: K(C)ongo, Fragments of Interlaced Dialogues, Palazzo Pitti, Florence (2022) and Palais des Beaux-Arts, Paris (2021); 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, and Sven Augustijnen and Sammy Baloji, Museumcultuur Strombeek (2018); Urban Now: City Life in Congo, Sammy Baloji and Filip de Boeck, The Power Plant, Toronto and WIELS, Brussels (2016-17), and Hunting and Collecting, Mu. ZEE Kunstmuseum aan zee, Ostend (2014). He has recently participated in the following international exhibitions: the São Paulo Biennale (2023); the Venice Biennale (2023, 2015); the Sharjah Biennale (2023); the Sydney Biennale (2020); Documenta 14 (Kassel/Athens, 2017); the Lyon Biennale (2015); and Festival Photoquai, Musée du Quai Branly (Paris, 2015).