Sammy Baloji

We are pleased to announce Sammy Baloji’s solo exhibition, The King’s Order to Dance, at the Imane Farès gallery (September 9 – December 16, 2023).

In connection with extractivism, always present in the artist’s work, the exhibition will present the installation …and to those North Sea waves whispering sunken stories (II) (2021), composed by a terrarium made by Sammy Baloji in resonance with the Wardian case, used in the nineteenth century to move endogenous plant species in imperial powers or colonizing countries. The form of the work also takes up the contours of the minerals extracted in certain mining areas in the Congo to highlight the various plunders that have been put in place to dispossess local lands of their natural resources.

This work is complemented by a new series of photographs also taken during Baloji’s residency in Ypres, a Belgian town on the front line between Germany and the Allies, whose surrounding landscapes still bear the scars of the First World War. By revealing the holes left by the shells, the artist evokes both the Congolese volunteer soldiers who fought alongside the Belgian army as well as the exploitation of the local population in the minerals also put at the service of the war, thus denouncing the indispensable nature of Congolese resources – both human and material – for Belgium in the context of this international conflict. This installation is accompanied by a sound archive drawn from a vast collection of recordings made with prisoners of war during the First World War by a group of German linguists, anthropologists and musicologists as part of an ambitious project to “collect the languages of the world”. Here we hear Albert Kudjabo, a Congolese prisoner, whistling, singing and drumming.

The film Aequare. The Future that Never Was (2023), that received a special mention at the 18th International Architecture, will also be presented at the gallery. By highlighting the second largest rainforest in the world around Yangambi, in the video the artist questions the legacy of colonialism and the ecological destruction that has resulted. Giving a view of this particular territory around the equatorial forest and the Yangambi Science Center (INEAC), Sammy Baloji also reveals a form of dissonance with this environment that results from “the acclimatization, scientific control and territorial appropriation of Africa by Western colonists” and suggests the essential character of this region that plays a primary role in reducing carbon emissions on a global scale.

Parallel events:

-Wednesday, October 18, 7pm: guided tour in the presence of the artist
-Tuesday, November 21, 6pm: conversation with Rolando Vazquez Melken and Sammy Baloji