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Towards a
depiction of...

the experimental/ the colonial museum 


A diptych

MuseumFutures Africa is a people-centered cultural project focussed on museums. It began with a focus on Africa, and expanded its reach to museums across the Global South, with the intention to test, explore and study potentials for new formats of Southern museology.

 

I had the opportunity to work with them to visualise the idea of a ‘decolonised museum’. This was a commissioned project to visualise the intention of the MuseumFutures project.

However, over many dialogues, I proposed a split-narrative stemming out of the work, a diptych. The first artwork explored the rigid structures of the white cube: the 'Colonial' museum- the model we are familiar with globally. It explores the negotiated inheritance of the colonial museum that we are left with.

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The visual interpretation was based on research of some of the largest global museums, their organisational structure and experience.

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The second artwork imagines the museum as landscape– and starts to literally, conceptually and experientially build a way of imagining alternatives.  

 

It was designed for the visitor to wander non-linearly across the artwork and find the small scenarios which ‘break the box’. The scenarios for decoloniality in museum practice draws from the research and project implementations from actual museums.

With changing and fluid anatomies, what kind of spaces, meanings and conversations could the public museum inhabit and create. If we change the processing of museum knowledge, what kind of a ‘museum’ would it result in? How does the notion of or creation of value change/ shift when the museological process/ museological form becomes absolutely transparent?

This artwork formed the basis of my presentation:

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'museum as landscape...'

 

for the International conference on the decolonisation of museums - ICOM Working Group on Decolonisation at

Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands on 17 June 2024.

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The presentation elaborates on the need for new alternatives and imaginals beyond "museum" building on the provocation that the museum cannot be decolonised. 

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The channel cast is for the entire programme with a variety of enaging presentations from the Working Group.

 

To listen to my presentation please go to  the timestamp 1:55:40.

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