Sammy Baloji

For more than two decades, Baloji has been exploring the complex interplay of cultural identity, colonial history, and industrial exploitation within his homeland, the Democratic Republic of Congo. His work is an ongoing research on the cultural, architectural and industrial heritage of the contested and resource-rich region of Katanga (in the South East of the country), as well as critically examining the impact of Belgian colonisation.

Baloji’s solo exhibition at EMΣΤ entitled Echoes of History, Shadows of Progress brings together installations, video works, and photographic series from the past twelve years of the artist’s practice, including a new commission. The exhibition highlights Baloji’s artistic research on the history, present-day reality and contradictions inherent in the formation of Congo. The works explore interactions between the pre-colonial Kongo empire and Europe, as well as the effects that the violent exploitation – of humans and resources – suffered by his country under Belgian colonial rule had on both nature and culture. Finally, it examines Katanga’s current forms of corporate resource extraction and the ecological destruction they cause.

The new commission, entitled The Meandering (2025), is a site-specific installation that builds on Baloji’s research into the exchanges between the Kingdom of Kongo (1390-1914) and Europe, as well as the colonial European systems of classification and knowledge production that followed. The work challenges Eurocentric hierarchies in art history and looks at how Western Europe embraced Greco-Roman antiquity, from the Renaissance onwards, to establish continuity with a supposedly golden past. In contrast, artefacts from colonial regions, such as the Kongo Kingdom, were excluded from this narrative as they did not serve this function of symbolic legitimation. Traces of this act of appropriation can also be recognised in the way classicists and archaeologists in Greece have re-interpreted ancient and modern African presence in the region, reinforcing colonial narratives. The title of the exhibition, Echoes of History, Shadows of Progress,points to the haunting, lingering presence of colonial legacies, but also the continuation of economic exploitation in contemporary Congo. In his work, Baloji masterfully casts a critical eye on contemporary societies, drawing attention to the fact that cultural clichés continue to shape collective memories.

Born in 1978 in Lubumbashi, DR Congo, Baloji lives and works between Lubumbashi and Brussels. Baloji’s work is also included in the major group exhibition Why Look at Animals? A Case for the Rights of Non-Human Lives, shown at EMΣΤ between 15 May 2025 and 15 February 2026.

Curated by iOLi Tzanetaki