Image: Léonard Pongo, 'Tales from the Source', still from the 39-minute HD video. Courtesy the artist.
Léonard Pongo’s ‘Tales from the Source’ is shown in The Box at the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus, Ohio, from 1 September to 31 October 2026, free for all audiences. It therefore opens more than a fortnight before the centre’s Fall 2026 Exhibitions Opening Celebration on Friday 18 September, 4–8pm, where it is listed among the autumn presentations. The Wex showing is organised by Film/Video Studio Director Jennifer Lange.
The Belgian Congolese artist and filmmaker transforms landscapes of the Democratic Republic of Congo using multispectral imaging technologies more commonly associated with scientific research, combined with an original score by Bear Bones, Lay Low, the experimental music project of the Venezuelan-born, Belgium-based artist Ernesto González. Running 39 minutes in HD video, the film moves between documentary and speculative fiction, treating forests, rivers and terrain as a living presence and drawing on Congolese stories and traditions rather than narratives of conflict or crisis.
The presentation is tied to ‘Sammy Baloji: When Extraction Becomes Form It Speaks in Borrowed Tongues’, on view at the Wex until 14 February 2027. Both artists deal with the legacies of colonialism and the traces that labour, industry and displacement leave in the land, and Pongo’s film was produced by Twenty Nine Studio & Production, the Brussels company founded by Baloji to support artist-driven moving-image work engaging with the histories and cultural memory of Central Africa.
Support for the centre’s film programmes comes from the Rohauer Collection Foundation. The Wexner Center is at The Ohio State University, 1871 North High Street, Columbus.
