Invited by curator Koyo Kouoh to the main pavilion of the 61st International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, Sammy Baloji has shown a couple of newly produced artworks for this occasion, taking as title On How I Became Witchcraft: A Survey of Colonial Libraries.

Through a series of three large-scale bronze sculptures, Sammy Baloji explores the evolving systems of classification that traditional Congolese artefacts have undergone within various historical and ideological contexts. Taking significant Congolese artworks as his starting point, he enlarges them and integrates cubic forms into them. These shapes are modelled on the crystalline structure of uranium, as seen under a microscope – a mineral extracted in Congo that has complicated the country's history. These crystals shape the sculptures while simultaneously 'contaminating' them through their allusion to radioactivity, violent extractivism and the destructive consequences of atomic weaponry.

Sixteen prints produced during a residency at MASEREEL engage with the sculptures. They blend images from ethnographic catalogues, drawings of mineral crystals and scans of Congolese artefacts held in ethnographic museums. Alongside images of the Belgian King Baudouin and Mobutu, these juxtapositions reveal the fragmented knowledge and scientific voyeurism inherent in collections of Congolese art.