Sammy Baloji, born in 1978, was raised in Lubumbashi (CD), a centre of colonial, post-colonial and contemporary entanglements related to resources. Colliding reality and representation, his photography and multimedia installations expose tensions between past and present. He mines the archive, traces social history in architecture and landscape, and probes the body as a site of memory and witness to operations of power. He is co-founder of the Picha Encounters Biennale in Lubumbashi.

Solo exhibitions
2018 A blueprint for toads and snakes, Framer Framed, Amsterdam. 2016–18 Sammy Baloji & Filip De Boeck – Urban Now: City Life in Congo, WIELS, Contemporary Art Center, Brussels; Open Society Foundation, New York, NY (US); The Power Plant, Toronto (CA); Galerias Municipais/EGEAC, Lisbon. 2014 Hunting and Collecting: Sammy Baloji, Mu.Zee, Ostend (BE).

Group exhibitions
2018 Congo Stars, Kunsthaus Graz, Graz (AT). 2017 documenta 14, Athens & Kassel (DE). 2016 11th Shanghai Biennale, Shanghai (CN). 2015/16 La vie moderne, 13th Biennale de Lyon, Lyon (FR). 2015–17 Senses of time: video and film-based works of Africa, Smithsonian National Museum of African Art, Washington D.C.; LACMA, Los Angeles (CA). 2015 All the world’s futures, 56th Biennale di Venezia, Venice (IT).

Writer and curator Lotte Arndt (Paris) accompanies the work of artists who critically interrogate the postcolonial present and the blind spots of modernity, and co-organizes cultural programmes, screenings and discussions. She co-curated Candice Lin: A Hard White Body (2017, with Lucas Morin at Bétonsalon, Paris, and 2018 at Portikus, Frankfurt/Main, with Philippe Pirotte); Tampered Emotions. Lust for Dust, Triangle France ( June 2018); One Sentence Exhibition, Kadist (August 2018); and worked on the research programme The Vacation of the Museum. Decolonize Ethnographic Collections with Cinema (2016–2018). Her PhD is dedicated to postcolonial negotiations in Paris-based cultural magazines related to Africa (2013). She is a member of the artists’ and writers’ group Ruser l’image and the research group Global Art Prospective (INHA Paris), and publishes on artistic strategies that aim to subvert Eurocentric narratives and institutions.