Artists Space

Artists Space Dialogues:
Ciarán Finlayson and Sammy Baloji

Conversation
April 11, 2021, 1pm

This series of Dialogues opens with Ciarán Finlayson and Congolese artist Sammy Baloji, who lives and works between Lubumbashi and Brussels. Inspired by Baloji’s trenchant and wide-reaching work in photography, installation, and film, their discussion will examine imperialism in the twenty-first century as expressed in global relations of production and how history and memory interlace. Finlayson will consider the function of sound and music in Baloji’s video work as well as Baloji’s engagement within art world systems and institutions via the collective Picha and the Lubumbashi Biennial which Picha founded and operate.

A figure in three-quarter profile, wearing a beaded necklace and a blue shirt, gazes outside the frame. In the background is a blurry window, and a partially decipherable city-scape.
Portrait of Sammy Baloji. Photo: Sophie Nuytten [A figure in three-quarter profile, wearing a beaded necklace and a blue shirt, gazes outside the frame. In the background is a blurry window, and a partially decipherable city-scape.]

Artists Space Dialogues is an ongoing series in which an invited curator brings together influential figures in contemporary art and culture to join them in a series of three in-depth public discussions. Our spring series is organized by Ciarán Finlayson, a writer and editor based in New York City. Finlayson has invited artists and philosophers who examine the histories, possibilities, and failures of left politics in a global context. Each of the participants is either engaged in building and sustaining an arts or education institution or in making work about the meaning of exemplary transdisciplinary art and education institutions for the present.

This program will be streamed online via Zoom as part of Artists Space Dialogues.

Artists Space Dialogues: Ciarán Finlayson and Sammy Baloji. Dialogue Documentation. Sunday, April 11, 2021, 1pm. Artists Space, New York. [Video documentation of multiple individuals engaged in dialogue with the use of imagery.]

Ciarán Finlayson is a writer and editor based in New York City. Finlayson’s essays on art and politics have appeared in magazines and journals including PARSE, Kunst und Politik: das Jahrbuch der Guernica-Gesellschaft, and Artforum, and he is currently the Managing Editor at Blank Forms.

Sammy Baloji lives and works in Lubumbashi, DRC and Brussels, Belgium. Baloji has had solo exhibitions at: Musée du quai Branly, Paris; MuZee, Oostende, Belgium; Royal Museum for Central Africa, Tervuren; and Museum for African Art, New York. Widely collected, Baloji has been featured in numerous group exhibitions worldwide. He has been the recipient of numerous awards including, the Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship, 2015, and the 2014 Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative award, partnering with Olafur Eliasson. He was a Prix Pictet finalist in 2009, received the Prince Claus Award in 2008, and two awards at the 2007 African Photography Biennial in Bamako, Mali. Sammy is represented in the United States by Axis Gallery, New York.

Program support for Artists Space is provided by The Friends of Artists Space, Lambent Foundation Fund of Tides Foundation, The Cowles Charitable Trust, The Cy Twombly Foundation, The David Teiger Foundation, The Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation, The New York Community Trust, The New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, The New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature, Imperfect Family Foundation, Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, The Stavros Niarchos Foundation, The Willem de Kooning Foundation, The Danielson Foundation, The Fox Aarons Foundation, Herman Goldman Foundation, The Destina Foundation, The Luce Foundation, May and Samuel Rudin Family Foundation, The Milton and Sally Avery Arts Foundation, VIA Art Fund, Arison Arts Foundation, The Chicago Community Fund, The David Rockefeller Fund, The Jacques and Natasha Gelman Foundation, The Jill and Peter Kraus Foundation, The Richard Pousette-Dart Foundation.