CONVERSATIONS
Rautenstrauch-Joest-Museum, Cologne
Curated by Carla de Andrade Hurst
With the voices of Carla de Andrade Hurst, Bebero Lehman, Matos Kaumba, and Donia Touglo
The ARbotage project drew significant attention within the landscape of museums in Germany. The debate about the role of museums as beneficiaries of cultural theft and colonial dominance has set in motion a movement of self-reflection and rethinking — at least within the walls of ethnological museums, where the displacement of the cultural artefact is most apparent. Beyond the urgent demand for restitution, the discourse has also extended into questions of curation, and of who the intended audience of museums in Germany actually is.
After becoming aware of the uncommissioned ARbotage, the diversity managers of the Rautenstrauch-Joest-Museum approached me with a request to propose a rethinking and transformation of the existing exhibit Der verstellte Blick — a ten-year-old special exhibition addressing racism and the colonial patterns of thought bound up with every ethnological collection.
As originally conceived, the exhibit did not account for the experience of Black people and People of Colour. Oversized colonial quotations were positioned at a height of three to four metres on the walls of a container, effectively creating a monument to colonialism. The container's interior was filled with multimedia content — projections, sound, and further quotations — leaving only fragmented blocks of text to break down the colonial statements and artefacts. Although established in "goodwill" a decade ago, its effect had been harmful.
With the museum's progressive director Nanette Snoep and diversity managers Carla de Andrade Hurst and Aurora Rodono, there was a fresh and honest foundation for transformation. The sight of the many schoolchildren entering the museum each day was a key motivation for me to intervene.
For the new exhibition, I created two large-scale paintings (each eight metres wide) that restored the presence of the Black people living at the beginning of the twentieth century — their thoughts and their voices. Everything was connected to the memory of the museum and the human encounters within it. The Herero and Nama struggle for justice, as well as the Berlin movement to decolonise street names, were among the histories surfaced within the walls of the RJM; I wanted to make them visible within the context of the collection itself.
A light installation in the interior revealed shifting "perspectives" by filtering the colours of the multicoloured wall paintings. The recorded voices of Carla de Andrade Hurst, Bebero Lehman, Matos Kaumba, and Donia Touglo created an intimate space in which to witness the conversation.
For me, this was an intense, personal, and authentic experience that revealed a great deal. I am grateful to have made it.
