Sammy Baloji

Baloji was born in Lubumbashi on December 29, 1978. He graduated in literature and human science at the University of Lubumbashi.[3][4]

After his study he first began to work as a cartoonist. Later he specialized in video art and photography. He made much of his work in his own province of Katanga. Recurrent in his work are ethnographic exploitation, architecture and urbanism, like the exploitation of man en environment in the Congolese urban landscape.[3]

Solo shows

• 2010 Mémoire – Goethe-Institut Nairobi, Nairobi Mémoire by Sammy Baloji – CGP London – Cafe Gallery Projects, London

• 2009 Katanga – Schatten der Vergangenheit – Deutsches Filmmuseum, Frankfurt/Main

Group shows

• 2020 Radical Revisionists: Contemporary African Artists Confronting Past and Present, Moody Center for the Arts, Houston, Texas[6]

• 2014 Present Tense – Centro de Arte Moderna – CAM – Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisbon
• 2014 Earth Matters: Land as Material and Metaphor in the Arts of Africa – Fowler Museum at UCLA, Los Angeles, CA
• 2014 Die Göttliche Komödie. Himmel, Hölle, Fegefeuer aus Sicht afrikanischer Gegenwartskünstler, The Divine Comedy. Heaven, Purgatory and Hell Revisited by Contemporary African Artists – Museum für Moderne Kunst (MMK), Frankfurt/Main

• 2013 Conversation Piece – Mu.ZEE, Oostende
• 2013 La Otra Bienal De Arte 2013 – La Otra Bienal, Bogota
• 2013 Witness/Témoin – Espace doual´art, Douala
• 2013 Earth Matters: Land as Material and Metaphor in the Arts of Africa – National Museum of African Art – Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC
• 2013 No Limit 2, Une Œuvre / Un Artiste – Galerie Imane Farès, Paris

• 2012 Newtopia – Cultuurcentrum Mechelen, Mechelen
• 2012 Le surréel Congo – Museum für Kunst und Kulturgeschichte Dortmund , Dortmund
• 2012 Status 24 – Dokumente Von Heute – Fotomuseum Winterthur, Winterthur
• 2012 All That Fits: The Aesthetics of Journalism – QUAD Gallery, Derby
• 2012 Project 35 – Kunsthaus CentrePasquArt – Centre d'Art, Biel/Bienne
• 2012 Environment and Object – Recent African Art – Middlebury College Museum of Art, Middlebury, VT

• 2011 Infinite Balance: Artists and the Environment – The Museum of Photographic Arts, San Diego, CA
• 2011 Level 2 Gallery: Contested Terrains – Tate Modern, London
• 2011 Project 35 – Gertrude contemporary art spaces, Melbourne, VIC
• 2011 Present Tense – Gulbenkian. Próximo Futuro, Lisbon
• 2011 Artists in Residence. Sammy Baloji & Patrick Mudekereza – Royal Museum for Central Africa, Tervuren
• 2011 Meeting Points 6 – Locus Agonistes: Practices and Logics of the Civic – Beirut Art Center, Beirut
• 2011 ARS 11 – Kiasma – Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki
• 2011 Possible Cities: Africa In Photography and Video – Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery (CFG) – Haverford College, Haverford, PA

• 2010 Prix Pictet / Earth – Gallery of Photography, Dublin
• 2010 Muestra Anual Xxiii Mam ChiloÉ – MAM – Museo de Arte Moderno Chiloé, Castro

• 2009 Périfériks – CAN – Centre d'Art Neuchâtel, Neuchâtel
• 2009 Spot On… Bamako – Vii. Rencontres Africaines de la Photographie – ifa-Galerie Stuttgart, Stuttgart

• 2008 InVideo: Lands And Skies – Spazio Oberdan, Milan
• 2008 Spot on...- ifa-Galerie Berlin, Berlin
• 2008 The Messenger – Cultuurcentrum Brugge, Bruges

• 2007 Congo Contemporain – Monos Gallery, Liège
• 2007 TRANS CAPE – contemporary African art on the move – Trans Cape Africa, Cape Town

In 2007 Baloji was twice awarded at the African Photography Encounters in Bamako, Mali, with the Prize Africa in Creation (Prix Afrique en Creation) and the Prize for the Image (Prix pour l’image).[7] In 2009 het was honored with a Prince Claus Award from the Netherlands, for "his highly original inscription of the painful history of human and environmental exploitation into the present-day landscape, for bringing Congo's current realities to an international platform, for his important contribution to the memory of the Congo providing a new reading of the present, and for his challenging demonstration that development can only be realized after duly taking into account the traumas of the past."[8]