Join curator Samuel Saelemakers in conversation with artist and researcher Sammy Baloji during Antwerp Art Weekend at Kunsthal Extra City. The discussion offers insight into the research behind Baloji’s exhibition Copper thread, Rubber thread, Sugar thread and his ongoing doctoral project, Contemporary Kasala and Lukasa: towards a Reconfiguration of Identity and Geopolitics, developed at Sint Lucas Antwerpen and the University of Antwerp.

Through tapestries, writing and sound, Baloji traces the complex historical and cultural relations between Central Africa and Europe. Materials such as copper, rubber and sugar – once central to colonial trade and systems of extraction – become threads that connect past and present. Drawing on archives, poetry and the Congolese kasala tradition, his work weaves together memory, historiography and speculative storytelling, inviting us to reconsider how histories are constructed and how new narratives might emerge from them.

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Free admission
Location: at the altar in the church
The conversation is conducted in English

Image: Sammy Baloji, detail from the design of the tapestry Seeing Katharina (2026)