About the exhibition

1977 saw the post-colonial Mobutu regime complete one, even higher, even more imposing, next to it. Today the Congolese government promises new urban infrastructures to inscribe Congo in yet another ‘revolution of modernity’. Against these ambitions and projections of power, the vital infrastructure of Congo’s cities is falling apart in the meantime.

In this rich picturing of the complexities that shape daily lives in Kinshasa and Lubumbashi, Sammy Baloji and anthropologist Filip De Boeck are focusing on the 'urban now': a moment that is suspended between lingering precolonial references, the broken dreams of a colonial past, and the not yet realised promises of neoliberal futures. They document a world that arises out of all three layers, beyond planning and regulation, made necessary by the failure of earlier models.

They reveal a cultural and socio-economic landscape of 'holes', creatively and necessarily stitched together - sutured - in a makeshift fashioning of the interconnecting opportunities through which people struggle to survive. They show the new and the gated dreams and architectures of an elite, protecting themselves from a chaos in which it is deeply complicit.