Lubumbashi, once a Belgian colonial mining town, casts today a pale shadow of its former glory. Baloji collides past and present in his series of large photomontages, entitled Mémoire (2006). He juxtaposes today’s colored industrial landscapes with historical images, drawn from the archives of the local mining company, which memorialize the colonial actors, indigenous and European, who toiled for and benefited from the mines. While the resulting images are indictments of the lasting legacies—social, political, environmental—of colonialism, they recall also the economic benefits produced by the mines and the ruin made of them after independence. Appropriating and assimilating all of this history, Baloji transforms the diverse temporal and personal fragments into a contemporary reading, and he believes this opens a way forward.

“Vues des Likasi” is a dimension-variable photomontage installation of 200 meters of this town in Katanga province. Viewers experience a vast panoramic snapshot of contemporary daily life, set among urban architecture ranging from the grand colonial era to today. 

Sammy Baloji

Sammy Baloji’s is currently featured in:

The Beautiful Time in Lubumbashi: Photography by Sammy Baloji, curated by Bogumil Jewsiewicki and organized by the Museum for African Art, New York, Smithsonian Museum of Natural History’s Focus gallery, Washington, D.C.

Environment and Object in Recent African Art, Middlebury College Museum of Art in Vermont (Jan. 27 to April 22, 2012). New York Times review by Holland Cotter.

Infinite Balance. Museum of Photographic Art in San Diego. October 11 2011 - February 5, 2012.

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