Kunsthalle Mainz is presenting a major group exhibition entitled “Unextractable: Sammy Baloji“. The exhibition brings together 13 contemporary artists, including : Sammy Baloji, Nilla Banguna, Jackson Bukasa & Dan Kayeye & Justice Kasongo, Sybil Coovi Handemagnon, Fundi Mwamba Gustave & Antje Van Wichelen, Franck Moka, Hadassa Ngamba, Isaac Sahani Dato, Georges Senga and Julia Tröscher. This event offers art lovers a unique opportunity to discover the work of these outstanding artists.
Sammy Baloji’s artistic approach explores the mining history of his home town of Lubumbashi, in the south-east of the Democratic Republic of Congo. He contrasts the profound destruction of the environment and social structures with the memories and hopes of the inhabitants of the Katanga region. Through his artistic practice, he seeks to accumulate diverse knowledge and encourage interaction between activists, art producers and academics.
He collaborates with 12 artists from the Democratic Republic of Congo and Europe, with whom he has regular exchanges, and whose work is a continuation of his development of collective structures. Sammy Baloji sees his artistic approach as a form of resistance to extractivism, an economic model based on extracting raw materials from nature.
The “Unextractable: Sammy Baloji” exhibition is structured around three themes directly related to Sammy Baloji’s artistic approach and his recent works. One of these themes, “Expropriation of land and transformation of land into raw materials“, stems from his artistic documentation of the extractive industries in Katanga.
This subject denounces the perception of land as a mere resource and society as a reservoir of potential labour. Tales of the Copper Cross Garden is one of the works in which Sammy Baloji confronts this view of the world with the hopes and desires of the people living amid the rubble left by industrial mining, colonialism and the global capitalist economy.
Franck Moka‘s Shimoko project also touches on this theme, highlighting the mining operations in Lubumbashi and the resulting environmental degradation and pollution. Hadassa Ngamba uses minerals such as malachite, cassiterite from Katanga, tar and charcoal in her work. She spreads them on her canvas entitled Cerveau (Brain), in addition to coffee. Georges Senga presents Tshanga Tshanga, a series of close-up aerial photographs that capture the impact of the extractive industries on the landscape and society of the Manono region, a town north of Lubumbashi.
In the second part of his exhibition, Sammy Balodji focuses on a critical study of colonial archives. By transcending shameful experiences and ethnographic assignments, the artist explores the forms of repression and radical movements undertaken and transmitted by the region’s inhabitants, contributing to the current societal metamorphosis. In connection with this theme, Sybil Coovi Handemagnon presents an installation on the toxicity of colonial collections, highlighting the chemical residues of insecticides responsible for modifying objects, as well as the looting of cultural assets from the colonial era.
In the same vein, Fundi Mwamba presents the experimental horror film by Gustave and Antje Van Wichelen, in which Dr Fundi, the film-maker’s fictional alter ego, searches for an antidote to limit the metamorphosis of humans into monsters as a result of environmental pollution. A multimedia installation entitled “Topos” is also being presented by Isaac Sahani Dato, after extensive research into colonial cartography and the designations of places and the new names given to them after they were appropriated by the colonists.
Nilla Banguna, Julia Tröscher, Jackson Bukasa, Dan Kayeye and Justice Kasongo reinterpret fragile narrative and pictorial legacies, focusing on transmission through transformation. One example is the Kasala, a poem recited as a tribute to the story of an individual or community, combining genealogical and biographical details with myths and narratives about the cosmic order of the world.
The artists taking part in “Unextractable: Sammy Baloji” are striving to promote new forms and collaborations to resist the impact of extractivism. Their work reveals the effects of consumerism and the excessive pursuit of financial profit, while placing the human at centre stage. Visitors are invited to discover the in-depth research of these talented artists through their artistic presentations, most of which were created for Picha and the Lubumbashi Biennial. The works on show were created for this purpose in collaboration with Framer Framed Amsterdam and Reconnecting “Objects“, and presented for the first time in Germany.
