In Copper thread, Rubber thread, Sugar thread, artist and filmmaker Sammy Baloji (1978, DR Congo) invites visitors to reconsider the history of colonial exploitation in Central Africa and the traces it continues to leave today. Through tapestries and sound installations, he brings together recent works in which material, image and voice are closely interwoven. Many of the works on view have never before been presented in Belgium.
The title refers to copper, rubber and sugar – raw materials that for centuries shaped colonial trade routes, power relations and inequalities. At the same time, the “thread” stands for connection. Thread carries stories, links different times, and makes visible how history is not fixed but continually rewoven. For Baloji, weaving is both a craft and a way of thinking: an invitation to look beyond linear histories.
Two monumental tapestries form the visual heart of the exhibition. In Seeing Katharina (2026), Baloji takes as his starting point The Negress Katharina, a sixteenth-century portrait considered one of the earliest representations of a Black woman in Europe, who is believed to have lived in Antwerp. He reweaves this image into a contemporary collage in which European and Congolese textile histories converge. That the work is shown in Antwerp for the first time lends this rereading a particular historical resonance. Rethreaded Indies (2025) draws on historical depictions of diplomatic encounters between the Kingdom of Kongo and Europe, questioning how power, equality and representation have been visually constructed.
The sound works Le fil sucre-pourpre de Mulohò (2024) and Missa Utica (2024) add a polyphonic layer. Poetry, music, and narration come together as a multi-voiced memory in which past and present coexist. In the former Dominican church that houses Kunsthal Extra City, the exhibition becomes a space where no single narrative dominates, and where listening and resonance take center stage.
Curated by Samuel Saelemakers.