1978
Sammy Baloji (°1978, Lubumbashi, CD) is a visual artist living between Brussels and Lubumbashi. His work is an ongoing investigation into the cultural, architectural, and industrial heritage of the Katanga region, as well as a questioning of the effects of Belgian colonization, highlighting the way identities are shaped, transformed, perverted, and reinvented. He co-founded Picha in 2008, the organization that started the Lubumbashi Biennale.
His recent solo exhibitions include ‘When Extraction Becomes Form It Speaks in Borrowed Tongues’ (Wexner Center for the Arts, 2026), ‘Paysage Prisme : une traversée katangaise’ (Les Rencontres d’Arles, 2026), ‘Copper thread, rubber thread, sugar thread’ (Kunsthal Extra City, 2026), ‘Echoes of History Shadows of Progress’ (EMΣT,2025); ‘Sammy Baloji’ (Goldsmiths Centre for Contemporary Art, 2024), ‘Unextractable: Sammy Baloji invites’ (Kunsthalle Mainz,2023); Style Congo. Heritage & Heresy, (CIVA, 2023); K(C)ongo, Fragments of Interlaced Dialogues. Subversive Classifications (Palazzo Pitti, Florence, 2022). He has recently participated in the Venice Biennale (2026), the Public Art Abu Dhabi Biennial (2024), the 35th Biennale de São Paulo (2023), the Venice Architecture Biennale (2023), the 15th Sharjah Biennial (2023) and the Sydney Biennial (2020). Sammy Baloji was selected as the winner of the 2026 Mondrian Prize.