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22

Nov 2021

#7 Wissensorte

Artist Talk: Unsettling (Y)our Gaze and Decolonizing the Archive

Basel

Schweizerische Gesellschaft für Afrikastudien (SGAS)

The archive, never neutral and the product of power relations, is an important resource for remembering the past. In more recent times colonial archives have become sites of critical reflection and vigorous artistic interventions.

Foto: Basler Afrika Bibliographien, Basel

In this artist talk, Namibian visual artist Vitjitua Ndjiharine provides insights into her artistic practices and experiences working with colonial photographic archives. Through her art she works to dissect the visual legacy of colonialism by physically cutting up photographic subjects and pasting them in different contexts. This process aims to question the formal and conceptual limits of colonial photography while allowing space for new narratives to emerge. With new and re-imagined contexts, the archive becomes a site of transformation, resistance, and disruption.

In conversation with the art historian, social anthropologist and curator Fiona Siegenthaler, Vitjitua Ndjiharine discusses new possibilities of knowledge creation.

Vitjitua Ndjiharine is an artist in residence with Atelier Mondial and Pro Helvetia in Basel.

Fiona Siegenthaler is the Africa Curator at the Linden-Museum, Stuttgart, Germany, and lectures at the University of Basel.

Moderation: Dag Henrichsen, Basler Afrika Bibliographien, and Maria Randy Mwatondange, Centre for African Studies, University of Basel.

 

Denkschau

Key Messages aus der Veranstaltung

#7 Wissensorte

The archive, never neutral and the product of power relations, is an important resource for remembering the past.

22. November 2021

The archive, never neutral and the product of power relations, is an important resource for remembering the past.

22. November 2021


#7 Wissensorte

Artist Talk: Unsettling (Y)our Gaze and Decolonizing the Archive

In this artist talk, Namibian visual artist Vitjitua Ndjiharine provided insights into her artistic practices and experiences working with colonial photographic archives. Through her art she works to dissect the visual legacy of colonialism by physically cutting up photographic subjects and pasting them in different contexts. This process aims to question the formal and conceptual limits of colonial photography while allowing space for new narratives to emerge. With new and re-imagined contexts, the archive becomes a site of transformation, resistance, and disruption.

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