The brutal exploitation behind Belgian Art Nouveau

LONDON — When Belgian Art Nouveau gained widespread public recognition at the 1897 International Exposition in Brussels, it quickly became fashionably known as “Style Congo” for its use of the country’s motifs and materials, such as the afzelia of tropical hardwood. As this elegant architectural style gained popularity, Belgian King Leopold II imposed a brutal, exploitative regime against the Congolese people after colonizing 770,000 square miles (two million square kilometers) during the so-called “Battle for Africa.” The regime relied on forced labor to extract minerals, rubber and ivory, and became infamous for its routine use of amputation as punishment when Leopold’s production quotas were not met. He even set up a ‘human zoo’ on the grounds of his palace, where he ‘exhibited’ 267 Congolese whom he enslaved.

In his exhibition at the Goldsmiths Center for Contemporary Art, Sammy Baloji does not deviate from the shocking human stories of this period of colonial violence, focusing instead on unearthing its pervasive and enduring legacy – including extraction practices and the Belgian Art Nouveau movement – ​​in the Democratic Republic of Congo and beyond.

The exhibition opens with the newly commissioned work ‘Still Kongo IV’ (2024), which consists of five aerial photographs of dense forest in Yangambi, Congo, from the archives of the Royal Museum for Central Africa in Tervuren. The images show how Belgium has mapped, territorialized and designated Congolese land as a resource rather than an ecosystem. Through comparisons with earlier and later photos, these images further map the environmental damage to these forests caused by logging and mining. The photographs are displayed in specially designed afzelia wood frames, carved with Congolese motifs appropriated by the Belgian Art Nouveau movement. By bringing these elements together, Baloji effectively shows how the architectural movement – ​​and by implication Belgium as a country and culture – was underpinned both economically and aesthetically by the colonization of Congo.

Baloji’s works are highly allusive and layered with research and aesthetic references. In his film ‘The Future that Never Was’ (2023), for example, he alternates shots of the world’s second largest rainforest with images of both the local environmental monitoring center from the colonial period and its post-colonial successor. Baloji questions whether the colonial past can ever be left behind, and thus whether there is any hope of restoring the world’s climate and ecosystems, when the infrastructure of contemporary conservation practices remains so closely linked to colonialism .

The history of Belgian colonialism in the Congo is not as widely known in Britain as its own imperial past, and bringing these difficult legacies to the fore feels important during this wider moment of reckoning. For example, it seems remarkable that activists in Belgium are too attempts to tear down statues of Leopold II as protesters call for the removal of statues of slave owners in British cities. Baloji attempts to unravel a legacy that is as unwieldy as it is problematic, while reweaving a new climate-conscious narrative.

Sammy Baloji continues until January 12, 2025 at the Goldsmiths Center for Contemporary Art (Saint James’s, New Cross, London). The exhibition was curated by Oliver Fuke.