Beneath the Surface: Labor and Consumerism

Sammy Baloji's monumental diptych Raccord #1: Cite de Kawama stages a sharp visual contrast between a Congolese temporary mining settlement and an advertisement for an idealized resort. The advertising image is not merely decorative, but is part of an economic system that manufactures longing, offering miners and their families a fantasy of leisure and mobility even as they remain excluded from the wealth it fuels. Building from Baloji's photograph, recently acquired by The Block Museum of Art, this exhibition reminds us that beneath the surfaces of leisure, consumption, and profit lie histories of exploitation and environmental damage. Beneath the Surface brings together artworks and advertising from the Block Museum collection and the Herskovits Library of African Studies to make us think about how extractive industries rely on visual strategies to promote consumption, obscure labor, and elevate luxury. By presenting these works side by side, the exhibition invites viewers to consider how our own desires, shaped by photographs and advertisements, are linked to hidden processes of extraction, exploitation, and environmental harm. Beneath the Surface is presented in conversation with Teresa Montoya's Tó Łitso (Yellow Water): Ten Years after the Gold King Mine Spill , on view in the main gallery. Together, the projects underscore how the impacts of extraction link distant communities.