#sammy baloji
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The Tower, A Concrete Utopia (2015)
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I am delighted to participate in some portraits made by Chrystel Mukeba for the exhibition STYLE CONGO, Heritage & Heresy at Civa in Brussels.
Also these images will be part of an installation at Yser station at Brussels in collaboration with Kanal Pompidou.
The works in the exhibition challenge and destabilize the canonical histories and colonial roots of this legacy. By examining the marks of colonization in the city of Brussels and in the Congolese urban landscape, they present a decolonial resignification of private and public spaces, and seek to rewrite the margins of history at the center.
FROM 17/03 to 3/09
ADDRESS CIVA
Hermitagestraat 55 1050 Brussels
Curators Sammy Baloji, Silvia Franceschini, Nikolaus Hirsch, Estelle Lecaille
With the participation of Judith Barry, Rossella Biscotti, Peggy Buth, Ayoh Kré Duchâtelet, Jean Katambayi, Johan Lagae & Paoletta Holst, Chrystel Mukeba, Daniela Ortiz, Ruth Sacks, Traumnovelle
With a selection of works by Victor Horta, Ernest Acker, Victor Bourgeois, Joseph Caluwaers, Jean-Jules Eggericx, Paul Hankar, Georges Hobé, Henry Lacoste, René Pechère, Fernand Petit, René Schoentjes, Gustave Serrurier-Bovy
#lewisossokoh#chrystelmukeba#twentyninestudio#civa#kanal pompidou#style congo#art nouveau#brussels#bruxelles#yser station#congo#sammy baloji#silvia franceschini#nikolaus hirsch#estelle lecaille#judith barry#rossella biscotti#peggy buth#ayoh kré duchâtelet#badi#drucila clement#jean katambayi#johan lagae#chrystel mukeba#daniela ortiz#ruth sacks#paoletta holst#traumnovelle#lewis ossoko h#2023
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K(C)ongo, Fragments of Interlaced Dialogues. Subversive classifications.
Sammy Baloji
Palazzo Pitti, Florence
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Artist Research - Sammy Baloji
The artist I'm currently researching is Sammy Baloji, a photographer from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. He works in Lubumbashi and Brussels and held exhibitions in Amsterdam, Paris, Brussels, Bilbao, Cape Town, and Bamako.
I'm particularly interested in his pieces working with copper, creating a series of bas-reliefs and sculptures onto which dots, shapes, and lines create what first appears to be a sort of abstract patterning, but which in fact reflect patterns of body scarification from the late 19th and early 20th century, that reveal meaning about the identity and community of the people shown in these photographs.
Sammys work relates to mine as it also looks at disrupting the body and visually it can look quite distressing but in reality his work comes from a place of nostalgia for the past and an appreciation for the body and the stories it can tell.
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Some other days...
Teak Atlas: From where do we Begin II as part of the exhibition “ Ecologies of Elsewhere” at the Contemporary Art Centre, Cincinnati
on view till August 06 2023
featuring
Sammy Baloji Firelei Báez Zheng Bo Torkwase Dyson Eric Gyamfi Emily Hanako Momohara Rashid Johnson Kapwani Kiwanga Las Nietas de Nonó MADEYOULOOK Lorena Molina Abel Rodríguez Lisandro Suriel Ilze Wolff Michaela Yearwood-Dan Rachel Youn
https://www.contemporaryartscenter.org/experience/exhibitions/2023/02/ecologies-of-elsewhere
📸
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Sammy Baloji, Untitled, 2018/2023. 50 mortar shell casings, interior plants. Music played intermittently through a single-channel speaker: Chanteurs à la croix de cuivre d’Elisabethville Chants religieux classiques et folkloriques (1948).
Exhibited as part of ‘The Accursed Share’, Talbot Rice Gallery, University of Edinburgh.
Accumulation as transformative, memorialising protest.
#accumulation#art#memory#war#domesticity#appropriation#democratic republic of the congo#mining#colonialism#resource extraction
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Zanele Muholi's indelible 2006 portrait, "Martin Machapa," is reproduced from new release 'Events of the Social: Portraiture and Collective Agency,' featuring 117 color and 115 black-and-white photographs from the world-renowned @walthercollect Gathering work by three generations of artists—including Sammy Baloji, Jodi Bieber, Mimi Cherono Ng’ok, Alfred Martin Duggan-Cronin, David Goldblatt, Seydou Keïta, Malick Sidibé, Mikhael Subotzky and @muholizanele among others—this volume presents a group of artists who can be seen as "agents of a postmodern paradigm shift" towards "biopolitical reflections, neocolonial critiques, gender-right advocations, ritual reactivations, multi-species theories, and political calls to action through the will of the collective," according to editor and curator @edyanganiose Published by @steidlverlag Read more via linkinbio. #zanelimuholi #martinmachapa #eventsofthesocial #africanportraiture #portraiture #africanphotography https://www.instagram.com/p/CnzTHRZg9j6/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=
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Sammy Baloji
…AND TO THOSE NORTH SEA WAVES WHISPERING SUNKEN STORIES (II)
At the beginning of World War I, thirty-two Congolese immigrants in Belgium volunteered to fight in the Belgian army. Among them was Albert Kudjabo, who was captured in August 1914 and spent the rest of the war at a prison camp in Münster. There, he was forced to participate in an archive project of the state-funded Royal Prussian Phonographic Commission, which made acoustic recordings of African prisoners of war. The recording of Kudjabo drumming and singing, which forms part of Sammy Baloji’s installation …AND TO THOSE NORTH SEA WAVES WHISPERING SUNKEN STORIES (II) (2021) has been stored in the Sound Archives of Humboldt University in Berlin. Kudjabo is anonymously credited there, using a racist term, in a convergence of the violence of war and that of the colonial archive.
How history is constructed—what is remembered and what is omitted—is an important thread that runs through Baloji’s work. The artist revisits histories of extraction and displacement, allowing silenced voices to finally be heard. In this work, Baloji parallels Kudjabo’s story with the Wardian case, a glass container that transported plants on English ships. It marked a clear beginning of the domestication of plants, the expansion of British imperialism, and a global decline in biodiversity. Baloji’s Wardian case alludes to Congolese displacement: it houses plants native to Congo and takes the form of a crystal, referencing the minerals extracted in Congo that have shaped the country’s past and present. The title of the piece refers to remnants of war—shipwrecks and large quantities of unexploded ammunition—that can still be found at the bottom of the North Sea. An analogy to colonial history, their presence becomes clear once their unresolved toxicity begins to surface and influence the present.
Heidi Ballet
Other artworks:
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#Blog 26: Museum
2023.4.15
Talbot Rice Gallery
/ Untitled, 2018/2023, Sammy Baloji
/ Terra Rationarium, 2018, Cian Dayrit
The installation was exhibited in an empty stepped hall. Various green plants are regularly placed in golden vases. At the same time, a piece of sacred music was playing. This made me feel the communi- cation and connection between plants, they are like a community, and even have their own culture. (p1)
The objects that people use daily can reflect his region, habits, hobbies, work and relation- ships, etc. Therefore, it can be said that a per- son’s belongings can represent the person. (p2)
/ Copperheads No.401-470, Moyra Davey
This photographer photographed coins of the same denomination with varying degrees of wear. In these enlarged photos of coins, we can clearly see the traces of nature. It could be corrosion, it could be wear, it could be patina. This reminds methat when artificial objects are inter- vened by nature, their value may not be changed, or they may have high- er or lower value. Likewise, how are these values assessed?
/ terrao: morphplogy panel 01, 2020, terrao
The artist extracted the texture of the tree in the photography and printed it on the glass through UV White Print, creating a double visual effect. The tex- ture expressed by the printing of mod- ern technology replaces the original texture of the tree. This kind of conflict between technology and nature makes me very interesting
/ The Plot (Utopia Bloemen), 2018, Goldin+Senneby
The artist acquired a wsteland in Bel- gium on top of a former coal mine. Find fossils of a carboniferous forest on the land, it triggered ideas of a deep time, beyond private property.
The artist draws a series of fossil pat- terns through the coal in the site. I am fascinated by this way of recording and creating through the materials of thesubjects the research.
National Museum of Scotland
I tried to see the details of a small patch of green algae through a microscope. Under the micro- scope, its outlines and shades become apparent.
/ Bernat Klein
This is a display board for fabrics of the same colour. Pig- ments are actually made by grinding natural substances with different colours into powder. Therefore almost all craft ma- terials of all artificial items come from nature. However, this cannot be reflected in the final product. It makes people for- get that our life is made of nature.
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Blog 21 — The Accursed Share
P1: Sammy Baloji, 'Untitled', 2018-2023. Installation view.
P2 Goldin+Senneby, 'The Plot (Utopia Bloemen)', 2018. Installation view.
P3-4 Lubaina Himid, 'Naming the Money', 2004. Installation close-up view.
The most memorable work for me is the last one.
Lubaina Himid’s Naming the Money is a ground-breaking work by the Turner-prize winning artist. Through the hand-painted, cut-out figures she conjures up the enslaved Africans depicted in history paintings of the European Royal Courts. Shifting their status from anonymous signifiers of wealth, Himid bestows each the dignity of individuality. On their backs they have two names, one their own and the other given to them by their owners.
As the artist states, “I wanted to create a meaningful conversation with audiences about what it means to belong, especially in the context of people who are ripped from one life into another. Whilst the work connects to various histories, its strength lies in its ability to connect; after all, each of us has a name.” It speaks to the European debt owed to the millions of people enslaved in the last centuries, whilst foregrounding a kind of vibrant survival.
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Sammy Baloji photographed the work in the top two images of the scarification of the body often done in Africa to identify their communities.
it reminded me of Neolithic period art and labyrinth symbols found in Cornwall. Something I’ve been interested in combining sacred beliefs with art. I find it interesting how the spiral symbol is universal not only occurring naturally in nature but some of the first forms of art and mathematics (Fibonacci spiral)
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Installation by Sammy Baloji for the exhibition K(C)ongo, Fragments of Interlaced Dialogues. Subversive classifications, 2022 The exhibition highlights a subversive profile of Kongo's artworks, which go beyond modern “exotic” or “ethnographic” classifications, a legacy of the transatlantic slave trade and the Scramble for Africa of the late 19th century, whose implications conflict with contemporary cultural perceptions and values. #IlikeItaly #Tuscany #Italy #DiscoverTuscany #mytuscany #InstaTuscany #VisitTuscany #visitflorence #destinationflorence #FeelFlorenceOfficial #PittiPalace #Pitti #Firenze #SammyBaloji (at Palazzo Pitti) https://www.instagram.com/p/CnCZ35mrirM/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=
#ilikeitaly#tuscany#italy#discovertuscany#mytuscany#instatuscany#visittuscany#visitflorence#destinationflorence#feelflorenceofficial#pittipalace#pitti#firenze#sammybaloji
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SAMMY BALOJI, K(C)ongo Fragments of Interlaced Dialogues. Subversive classifications
Prima mostra in Italia dell’artista congolese SAMMY BALOJI che racconta la complessità del dialogo tra Kongo ed Europa.
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vimeo
“Radical Revisionists: Contemporary African Artists Confronting Past and Present” is a group exhibition of 10 artists from Africa and the Diaspora who problematize Eurocentric tropes of race, representation and prevailing colonial narratives. The exhibition addresses the violent erasure of marginalized histories and the ways in which artists reinterpret familiar themes through contemporary, Afrocentric lenses. Featured artists include Sammy Baloji, Serge Attukwei Clottey, Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Omar Victor Diop, Adama Delphine Fawundu, Zanele Muholi, Robin Rhode, Yinka Shonibare CBE, Mary Sibande, and Pascale Marthine Tayou. Harrison Guy, 2019-20 CERCL Artist-in Residence and Founder/Artistic Director of Urban Souls Dance Company, presents "Black Bodies in White Spaces: A Performance Ritual." Choreographed by Guy, the performance is in engagement with the Moody's spring exhibition. The mission of the Moody Center for the Arts is to encourage creative thinking and original expression, enrich curricular innovation, and promote cross-campus and community collaboration through transformative encounters with the arts. Visit moody.rice.edu to learn more.
#moodycenterforthearts#sammy baloji#attukwei clottey#njideka akunyili crosby#omar victor diop#adama delphine fawundu#zanele muholi#robin rhode#yinka shonibare cbe#mary sibande#pascale marthine tayou#harrison guy
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