Paris (AFP)

During four centuries of exchanges with Europe, African art has been instrumentalized, categorized in a simplistic way, even forgotten: the Congolese artist Sammy Baloji presents to the Beaux-Arts in Paris a work that "reactivates memory" and " reappropriates "this story.

"It's the empty space of history that interests me. I want to make these forgotten spaces speak," explains the 41-year-old artist from Lubumbashi (south of the Democratic Republic of the Congo) to AFP. , which says it works on "genealogies".

Sammy Baloji engraved on seven bronze plaques ("Negative of luxury cloth") the patterns of the fabrics and cushions that the king of Kongo - a kingdom of South West Africa - sent in the 16th century to Portugal and the Vatican as diplomatic gifts.

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On his paintings with bright colors and kinetic energy ("Wunderkammer, work in progress"), Sammy Baloji has taken the vertical threads of traditional looms.

"Weaving is one of the techniques we all share, and even the computer runs on its binary system," says the artist.

- King, Jesuits and merchants -

Suspended above his works, four "Indian hangings", 18th century tapestries from the Manufacture des Gobelins, represent black people in fantasized universes.

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Sammy Baloji researched forgotten history in archives and museums.

In the 16th century, Kongo was a rich kingdom on the Atlantic, whose territory is now divided between Congo-Brazzaville, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Angola.

The exchanges between its king converted to Christianity, the Vatican and Portugal, the comings and goings of the merchants and the Jesuits: this relative dark balance with the triangular trade and the deportation to America of the populations.

And knowledge is lost.

Why does Sammy Baloji work with bronze?

It is because the extraction of copper - a component of bronze - has accompanied it since its birth in 1978 in Lubumbashi, not far from the Gécamines factory, a company that had administered the mines since colonial times.

"Copper, it started with the production of crosses for Europe," he says.

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The Beaux-Arts have opened their finest room to this artist who has established himself on the contemporary scene for his powerful creation supported by a reflection on colonization.

This former resident of the Villa Medici in Rome, who took part in the Venice Biennale and the Documenta in Cassel, does not like to be categorized as an "African artist".

He has exhibited in Paris (recently at the Grand Palais), New York, Washington, London, Sydney and in the DRC, a melting pot of abundant creation.

- Ethnographic object -

Sammy Baloji investigated the route of objects that came to Europe.

Many, brought by the Jesuits, were exhibited in cabinets of curiosities in the Renaissance, before losing their own identity in natural history museums and world exhibitions, he explains.

At the 1897 exhibition organized in Brussels by Leopold II, in the midst of Belgian colonization, "Art Nouveau" thus incorporated many Kongo motifs.

"At a certain point, the black man will become an ethnographic object. Ethnography is colonial science. The history of art is then created around a Eurocentric vision", he underlines. .

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It was only in the 1920s that the concept of "black art" was born.

Asked about restitutions, the artist, even if he is favorable to the idea, is loath to enter into a complex debate.

"In Africa," he notes, "museums operate according to scenographies inherited from Europe".

The exhibition, as part of the "Africa2020 Season", is also presented with the Festival d'Automne, which was to take place from December to January and which the Covid postponed to June-July.

- Sammy Baloji, Beaux-Arts de Paris, until July 18

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