Mémoire, a series of photomontages constructed in 2006 by the Congolese artist Sammy Baloji, comprises a set of black-and-white archival photographs embedded onto colored prints of the contemporary landscape of Lubumbashi, a city located in the Katanga province of the Democratic Republic of Congo. In the thirty composite images, Congolese men and women and European officials extracted from photographs produced mainly during the 1920s–30s in the Belgian Congo appear to enter today's dilapidated industrial mining sites in and around the city.

The history of Katanga and contemporary struggles in the region are central to the work of Sammy Baloji. The Berlin Conference of 1884–1885 gave Katanga to the king of Belgium, Leopold II. Beneath its surface, Katanga concealed a geological wealth of copper. In addition, the area contained zinc, cobalt, tin, gold, wolframite, manganese, tantalum, anthracite, coal, and uranium. Union Minière du Haut Katanga, a company established by King...

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