Join curator Samuel Saelemakers in conversation with artist and researcher Sammy Baloji during Antwerp Art Weekend at Kunsthal Extra City. The discussion offers insight into the research behind Baloji’s exhibition Copper thread, Rubber thread, Sugar thread and his ongoing doctoral project, Contemporary Kasala and Lukasa: towards a Reconfiguration of Identity and Geopolitics, developed at Sint Lucas Antwerpen and the University of Antwerp.

Through tapestries, writing and sound, Baloji traces the complex historical and cultural relations between Central Africa and Europe. Materials such as copper, rubber and sugar – once central to colonial trade and systems of extraction – become threads that connect past and present. Drawing on archives, poetry and the Congolese kasàlà tradition, his work weaves together memory, historiography and speculative storytelling, inviting us to reconsider how histories are constructed and how new narratives might emerge from them.

The conversation will take place on Friday, 15 May 2026, 19:00 - 20:00.

What happens when the fall of mankind is not the end, but a beginning?

In Lapsarian 3.0, artist and researcher Goda Palekaitė invites visitors to reflect on moments of collapse and on what might emerge in their aftermath.

The exhibition takes its starting point from the idea of the “lapsarian”, a term that refers to the fall of humanity from paradise. Rather than treating this story as a moral lesson or a definitive rupture, Palekaitė approaches the fall as a threshold: a moment of transition in which established certainties dissolve and new ways of thinking become possible.

In Lapsarian 3.0, installations, sculptures, video, sound, text and works developed with artificial intelligence come together in a layered scenography. Past, present and possible futures intertwine, forming a hybrid universe in which history is not fixed, but continuously rewritten. Ancient narratives resonate with contemporary questions around technology, power, belief, ecology and ways of living together.

Lapsarian 3.0 (2026), a new work developed specifically for Kunsthal Extra City, forms the heart of the exhibition. Taking the Roman catacombs as its guiding metaphor — underground spaces where new forms of community emerged in times of crisis — Palekaitė reflects on this historical moment as an allegory for the present. Through filmed material and AI-generated elements, the work unfolds as a speculative visual landscape in which different temporalities coexist.

Alongside this new commission, the exhibition presents a selection of works created by Palekaitė over the past five years. Rather than offering a chronological overview, these works form a constellation of ideas around mysticism, anarchism, feminist historiography and speculative forms of knowledge. They give space to marginalised voices, forgotten stories and alternative ways of knowing — not as nostalgia, but as sources of imagination and hope.

In Copper thread, Rubber thread, Sugar thread, artist and filmmaker Sammy Baloji (1978, DR Congo) invites visitors to reconsider the history of colonial exploitation in Central Africa and the traces it continues to leave today. Through tapestries and sound installations, he brings together recent works in which material, image and voice are closely interwoven. Many of the works on view have never before been presented in Belgium.

The title refers to copper, rubber and sugar – raw materials that for centuries shaped colonial trade routes, power relations and inequalities. At the same time, the “thread” stands for connection. Thread carries stories, links different times, and makes visible how history is not fixed but continually rewoven. For Baloji, weaving is both a craft and a way of thinking: an invitation to look beyond linear histories.

Two monumental tapestries form the visual heart of the exhibition. In Seeing Katharina (2026), Baloji takes as his starting point The Negress Katharina, a sixteenth-century portrait considered one of the earliest representations of a Black woman in Europe, who is believed to have lived in Antwerp. He reweaves this image into a contemporary collage in which European and Congolese textile histories converge. That the work is shown in Antwerp for the first time lends this rereading a particular historical resonance. Rethreaded Indies (2025) draws on historical depictions of diplomatic encounters between the Kingdom of Kongo and Europe, questioning how power, equality and representation have been visually constructed.

The sound works Purple sugar thread of Mulohò and Missa Utica add a polyphonic layer. Poetry, music, and narration come together as a multi-voiced memory in which past and present coexist. In the former Dominican church that houses Kunsthal Extra City, the exhibition becomes a space where no single narrative dominates, and where listening and resonance take center stage.

During Antwerp Art Weekend, Goda Palekaitė and Darly Benneker come together in the monastery garden of Kunsthal Extra City and MORPHO for a conversation on how contemporary artistic and curatorial practices engage with institutions, histories and systems of knowledge. The discussion connects the exhibitions Lapsarian 3.0 (Kunsthal Extra City) and Walls, Soft as Listening (MORPHO), and explores how fiction, storytelling, speculation and site-responsive practices can open up new ways of understanding the world.

Through different artistic strategies, both artists imagine alternative realities and perspectives. In Lapsarian 3.0, Palekaitė engages AI as a tool to create distance and estrangement, allowing other narratives and possible worlds to emerge. In Walls, Soft as Listening, Darly works through the physical qualities of materials and natural agents such as the rubber tree, weaving together memory, fiction and history. While their approaches differ, both artists respond closely to specific places – from the Catacombs of Rome to the botanical gardens of Medellín – revealing layered stories about identity, ecology and belonging.

The conversation will take place on Saturday, 16 May 2026, 19:00 - 20:00.

Kunsthal Extra City exhibits contemporary visual art in a welcoming and unique setting. Housed in a former Dominican monastery, Kunsthal Extra City seeks to become a bastion of the visual arts with a solid reputation both in Belgium and internationally. They offer opportunities to young artists as well as a platform for established figures to experiment.