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Opening Reception for Urban Now: City Life in Congo

  • When
  • November 1, 2016
    3:00–9:00 p.m. (EDT)
  • Where
  • Open Society Foundations–New York
    224 West 57th Street
    New York, NY 10019
    United States of America

The Open Society Documentary Photography Project invites you to the opening reception for the exhibition Urban Now: City Life in Congo.

This exhibition by photographer Sammy Baloji and anthropologist Filip De Boeck offers an exploration of different urban sites in Congo, through the media of photography and video. Focusing on the “urban now,” a moment suspended between the broken dreams of a colonial past and the promises of neoliberal futures, the exhibition offers an artistic and ethnographic investigation of what living—and living together—might mean in Congo’s urban worlds.

This exhibition marks the launch of an expanded exhibition program by the Open Society Documentary Photography Project that now includes both its longstanding Moving Walls series, as well as shows co-organized with partner institutions.

Urban Now: City Life in Congo was organized by WIELS Contemporary Art Centre in Brussels, and curated by Devrim Bayar. It will be open to the public at Open Society Foundations–New York through July 14, 2017. Afterward, the exhibition will travel to the Power Plant in Toronto and Galerias Municipais/EGEAC in Lisbon.

The show also marks the start of a yearlong look at the topic of urbanization through the Documentary Photography Project’s exhibition program.

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