When Harmony Went to Hell: Congo Dialogues

Unfortunately not all anniversaries are happy events and more often than not they mark the harsh realities of our past. To coincide with the 175th anniversary of Anti-Slavery International and the invention of photography, Autograph ABP have organized this remarkable display of Alice Seeley’s informative photographic archive that hasn’t been seen in 110 years. Collated by the English missionary at the beginning of the last century, it reveals the violent and harrowing conditions the Congolese people lived in during the reign of King Leopold II. These disturbing facts and the effect of colonization are central to the work of contemporary Congolese artist Sammy Baloji, whose photomontages will be shown alongside the archive.