When debates on international law and its global influence were quickly played out at the UN General Assembly, as usual, their real-time records were largely interested in diplomats and journalists. But recently, these summits have attracted unexpected followers in Coumba Samba, whose artists are fascinated by the possibility of many different countries representing each other in a room. The summits even form their own work on Samba’s Empire Show in 2024, a small gallery located in an office building 20 minutes’ walk from the United Nations Headquarters in New York.
At the United Nations, the words of these messengers are very important and have the potential to influence the world more widely. In Empire, their rhetoric acted as background noise for the show, titled “Dressing Requirements.” It includes just a few poles, green carpet, and phones and speakers that play footage of the United Nations live conference. Samba soured the poles from the construction company and then used colorful ribbons with irregular sizes, referring to the national flag. One of them features red, white and blue, which Samba said was a flag shared by many colonial nations. “I’m interested in color and strength,” Samba said during my meeting in New York.
Coumba Samba’s exhibition “Dressing Requirements”, 2024, in the New York Empire.
The Empire of New York
Samba shows off the canvas and the objects found (wooden trays, discarded radiators), these tones pay tribute to highly specific but sometimes elusive sources. Striped blinds (2023), for example, is a set of broken Venetian blinds with slats painted in lime green, mustard yellow and grey, the colors the Samba band sister wore during the model date. But without these sensual details, the work feels cold and impersonal. All intimacy is lost when transforming these stories into an ostensibly universal abstract language.
That was intentional. Samba’s interest in things in translation stems from her transnational lifestyle. Born in Harlem, she grew up in Senegal for 5 years before her family returned to New York. Now she divides her time between that city and various European hubs, including Basel, and in September she will showcase new works in Kunsthalle. She said that traveling back and forth across the Atlantic Ocean allowed her to observe what she called “causality” phenomenon, referring to garbage: Rejections from European countries are usually washed off the coasts of African countries such as Senegal.
In a solo performance at Arcadia Missa in London in 2024, Samba painted a series of wall-mounted radiators in monochrome, so they resemble squares and rectangles that one might associate with Russian supremacist paintings. The Russian connection was intentional: an accompanying brochure introduces an article by dealer Mischa Lustin about what he calls “red gas,” or oil exported from Russia to warm homes around the world. Lustin pointed out that the Russian invasion of Ukraine led to sanctions on oil, and the ensuing European energy crisis. She said the samba’s radiator may be monochromatic, but “should not be completely abstract.” Instead, they talked with global supply chains, both material and ideology.
