Sammy Baloji

Born in 1978 in Lubumbashi (Congo), is a visual artist and photographer, as well as co-founder of Rencontres Picha, a photography and video biennial in Lubumbashi. Since 2005, he has been exploring the memory and history of the Democratic Republic of Congo. His work is a perpetual search for the cultural, architectural and industrial heritage of the Katanga region, as well as a questioning of the effects of Belgian colonization. His videos and photographic series highlight the ways in which identities are shaped, transformed, perverted and reinvented.

Baloji took part in the Rencontres Africaines de la Photographie de Bamako in 2007, the Lyon Biennial in 2015, the Venice Biennial in 2015, the Photoquai festival at the Musée du Quai-Branly in 2015, the Dakar Biennial in 2016 and the XIV edition of Documenta in 2017. His work has been exhibited at the Royal Museum for Central Africa in Tervuren, the Kunstmuseum aan zee in Oostende, the Tate Modern in London, Africa Center in New York and the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art in Washington DC. He has received several awards, including from the Prince Claus Foundation in the Netherlands, the Rencontres Africaines de la Photographie in Bamako and the Dakar Biennale. He won the Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative award in 2014.

As part of the residents’ exhibition Dans le tourbillon du tout-monde at Villa Médicis (10.07 – 13.09.2020), Sammy Baloji exhibits his work, including an extract from a letter (facsimile) from Alfonso I, King of Kongo, to Manuel I, King of Portugal, concerning the burning of the “great house of idols”. Find the full text of this letter in English or French. Source: Kingdom of Kongo, October 5, 1514, National Archives of Torre do Tombo, Lisbon.