Fragments of the Interlaced Dialogues

In this installation, Sammy Baloji interweaves a number of stories that relate to the effects of colonialism. Baloji takes as his point of departure the exhibition Kongo, Power and Majesty (2015) in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, where embroidered fabrics, woven raffia mats, garments from the Kongo Kingdom, and similar objects were on view. These objects were once shipped out of the Kingdom by Christian missionaries and their colonial henchmen, and are now part of the collections of ethnological museums across Europe and America. Originally the fabrics were used for clothing and decoration, but they were also the carriers of knowledge, history, cultures and philosophies that were expressed in geometric shapes. Fragments of Interlaced Dialogues is a reflection on the origin and evolution of symbols and language as the carriers of culture and knowledge, and on how (a visual) language can create, change and consolidate power relations. A photograph features a storage space in the Institut des Musées nationaux du Congo in Kinshasa, where European porcelain (which was once used as currency) is stored next to Kongolese funerary pottery.

Documenta, Kassel, 2017 CC Strombeek, Belgium, 2018 Le Point du Jour, Cherbourg, 2019