Fragments of Interlaced Dialogues: Annotated Archives
Sammy Baloji
October 29- December 30
Fragments of Interlaced Dialogues: Annotated Archives is a project dedicated to research developed by and around artist Sammy Baloji over the past years as an exhibition series and opportunity for collective forms of study. Drawing upon the history of exchange between the Kingdom of Kongo, its geo-social territory over successive centuries and Europe, this project is designed to provide methodologies for critical analysis and the annotation of archival materials advanced by a range of experts across disciplines. The project emerges as a counterpart to the exhibition K(C)ongo. Fragments of Interlaced Dialogues: Subversive Classifications currently on display through November 27th in the Andito degli Angiolini at Palazzo Pitti curated by Chiara Toti, Lucrezia Cippitelli and the curatorial collective BHMF. The exhibition at The Recovery Plan, composed of a range of source materials and supplemented by critical perspectives, questions the construct of the canon, examines the absences of the archive and calls for a fuller narration of history, pushing towards a reconsideration of notions of marginality as defined by exclusionary practices. This project is an exercise in a practice of resistance. Resistance in relation to the absenting of a centuries long history of exchange between the continents of Africa and Europe and resistance to the advancement of paternalistic ethnographic classifications that have displaced and obscured the horizontality of the diplomatic exchanges of the past. It is a remapping of the archive itself removed from the display case and enriched by the orality and positionality of collective study. The exhibition features research by Afriterra, Simao Amista and Lucrezia Cippitelli.