With reference to three principal works, Sammy Baloji tackles the question of transmission and genealogy by means of the Congolese rumba, the tradition of the kasala and the so-called “Indies” tapestries made at the Gobelins Manufactory between the 17th and 18th centuries. Sammy Baloji is also the author of the visual for the 49th edition of the Festival and created the limited edition 2020 that you will be able to discover on the Festival’s online shop in the autumn. Coproduction Festival d’Automne à Paris. Event organized within the framework of the Africa 2020 Season, in partnership with France Culture.
Image: Sammy Baloji, Ekibondo Court revisited. Photomontage of the installation (fresco) for the exhibition Congo Art Works, Palais des Beaux-Arts (BOZAR), Brussels, October 7, 2016 – January 22, 2017, in collaboration with the Africa Museum. Design and production: Orfée Grandhomme & Ismaël Bennani for Sammy Baloji / Twenty Nine Studio
Sammy Baloji, Mohssin Harraki and Younès Rahmoun are taking part in the exhibition Global(e) Resistance, pour une histoire engagée de la collection contemporaine, de Jonathas de Andrade à Billie Zangewa, cur. by Christine Macel, Alicia Knock and Yung Ma. The exhibition Global(e) Resistance unveils for the first time the works of more than sixty artists gathered over the last decade, the majority of whom come from the Global South (Africa, Middle East, Asia, Latin America) and aims to examine contemporary strategies of resistance. Global(e) Resistance also poses theoretical questions that range from the articulation of aesthetics and politics to the very relationship between the museum and politics within the art world. Musée national d’art moderne/Centre Pompidou, Paris, France
Image: Younès Rahmoun, Ghorfa-Janna (House-Paradise), 2015
The exhibition presents works from the MMK collection ranging in date from the early 1960s to the present, including some of the museum’s newest acquisitions. TOWER MMK, TaunusTurm, Frankfurt am Main
Image: Sammy Baloji, Tales of the Copper Cross Garden: Episode I, 2017, MUSEUM MMK FÜR MODERNE KUNST, photo: Axel Schneider
Sammy Baloji and Sinzo Aanza are taking part in the collective exhibition Kinshasa, la ville vue par ses artistes contemporains, cur. : Dominique Malaquais, Sébastien Godret, Fiona Meadows, Claude Allemand, and Éric Androa Mindre Kolo. Cité de l’architecture & du patrimoine, Paris, France — co-produced with MIAM, Sète
Image: Sinzo Aanza, Épreuve d’allégorie, 2017. ph. Gaston Bergeret – Cité de l’architecture et du patrimoine, Paris, 2020.
The Rmn – Grand Palais is taking part in the Africa 2020 Season by inviting the artist Sammy Baloji to create two exceptional sculptures for the pedestals of the facade of the Grand Palais, on the Champs-Elysées-Clemenceau side., cur. Chris Deacon.
Image: Sammy Baloji, Johari – Brass Band, 2020. © Collection Grand Palais, photo Didier Plowy
Other Tales, first personal exhibition of Sammy Baloji in Scandinavia, cur. Matteo Lucchetti Lunds Konsthall, Lund, Sweden
Sammy Baloji, exhibition view of Other Tales, Lunds Konsthall, 2020. Photo © Daniel Zachrisson
Sammy Baloji and Younès Rahmoun are taking part in the collective exhibition “Our World is Burning“, cur. Abdellah Khartoum and Fabien Danesi The exhibition Our World is Burning offers a fully political view of international contemporary creation seen from the Gulf, where wars and diplomatic tensions have constantly determined the history of the early 21st century. The title explicitly refers to the human disasters generated by the successive conflicts in this region, while bringing in as broadly as possible the ecological catastrophes… Palais de Tokyo, Paris, France
Younès Rahmoun, Nafas (Breath) and La-Nafas (Non-Breath), 2001. “Our World is Burning”, Palais de Tokyo, 2020. Photo: Aurélien Mole
Sammy Baloji is taking part in the 22nd Biennale of Sydney, cur. Brook Andrew. For his research project at NIRIN, he draws on these earlier works by confronting two operational cultural modes (the kasalaand lukasa) to critically approach the imposition of identity frontiers during the colonial period. Thus, his artistic research aims to capture these pre-colonial political and aesthetic codes and to create narrative devices, including the postcolonial socio-political framework. Cockatoo Island, Sydney, Australia
Sammy Baloji, Kasala, The Slaughterhouse of Dreams or the First Human, Bende’s Error, 2019. 22nd Biennale of Sydney (2020), Cockatoo Island. Photo: Zan Wimberley.
Sammy Baloji is taking part in the collective exhibition “À toi appartient le regard entre et (…) la liaison infinie entre les choses” (“Who Is Gazing?”) at musée du quai Branly – Jacques Chirac, cur. Christine Barthe. Photography, video, installation: for the first time, the musée du quai Branly – Jacques Chirac is dedicating a major exhibition within its walls to contemporary images in all their forms. In the wake of its residency programme and surveys conducted over the last ten or so years, the exhibition presents twenty-six non-European artists from a variety of backgrounds, both young and emerging talents. Musée du quai Branly – Jacques Chirac, Paris, France
Photo: Alessandra Bello
Sammy Baloji is taking part in the annual exhibition of the residents of l’Académie de France in Rome, cur. Lorenzo Romito
Image: Sammy Baloji, Mfuba’s extract, 2020, acrylic painting on paper. Installation view: French Academy in Rome – Villa Medici. Photo © Daniele Molajoli. Académie de France à Rome – Villa Médicis
Other Tales is Sammy Baloji’s first solo exhibition in both Sweden and Denmark, curated by Matteo Lucchetti Kunsthal Aarhus, Aarhus, Denmark
Image: Sammy Baloji. Other Tales, Kunsthall Aarhus, 2020. Photo © Mikkel Kaldal
