Abstract
This paper discusses an intercultural artistic research project around the Congo collection of objects in the Museum of Ethnography in Stockholm. The collection, once amassed by Swedish missionaires in the Congo at the turn of the last century, is for the most part silent today, packed away in the museum storage. Ariella Azoulay argues that object restitution is but one aspect of postcolonial repair, we need to return to the moment during which the objects went missing in order to reconstitute the lost world. Within Kikongo tradition, on the other hand, objects are merely containers that can be imbued with an empowering spirit through which it is possible to communicate with, and seek guidance from, the ancestors. Using contemporary photogrammetry copies of a selection of divination containers, the paper explores if and how copies can resume the place of the dislocated objects; as tools for speaking with the dead and returning to lost worlds in a process of participatory critical fabulation. Saidia Hartman purports that stories can perhaps be the only form of reparation or compensation historically subjugated people will receive. The paper discusses what kind of historiography, and in extension reparation the objects engendered during a series of divination workshops in the Lower Congo. The study also discusses the museum exhibitions that resulted from the collaborative and participatory process, exhibitions held at the National Museum of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and in a forthcoming show at the Ethnographic museum in Sweden.
Presenters
Cecilia JärdemarSenior Lecturer, Photography and Moving Image, Australian National University, Australian Capital Territory, Australia
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
Museums, Visitors, Stakeholders, First Nations, Region, Culture
