Ancestral heads, Oyo birds and gongs: towards an activation of “boundary objects”
APC post-doctoral fellow Memory Biwa took part in “Artificial Facts”, a transnational exhibition and research project which saw interventions in Cape Town, Porto Novo and finally Dresden in June 2015, engaging with questions around historical colonial collections of human “remains” and objects. Biwa reflects here on the project and exhibition:
“Artificial Facts” is a transnational exhibition and research project which features the work and inputs of artists, scholars and curators. The project was initiated by the Berlin-based artist group Artifakte//activierung (Brigitte Kuster, Regina Sarreiter, Dierk Schmidt) in collaboration with Kunsthaus Dresden, Municipal Gallery for Contemporary Art. The activation in Dresden was the last station of the project which saw interventions in Cape Town in September 2014, and Porto Novo in October 2014.
The research project and exhibition are timely, as European heritage and cultural institutions have been examining their collections and forms of presentation in order to re-centre their historical collections in institutions of “world cultures”. Some of these discussions were reanimated at the “7th Humboldt Lab Dahlem”, and “Symposium on Historical Collections and Contemporary Art: A discussion on curatorial strategies”, initiatives of the German Federal Cultural Foundation and the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation held at the Ethnological Museum in Berlin in June 2015.
Yvette Mutumba writes that ethnological museums have attempted to restage their institutions as “post-ethnographic research laborator(ies), to give the collections contemporary relevance through interdisciplinary analysis and interpretation of the objects and thus to produce new knowledge…”(Mutumba 2014). While these attempts may reposition the museum’s relevance, they hardly problematise its dichotomised hierarchical constitution and, as Mutumba, argues “western claims to property and the representation of non-European cultural assets appear to have been rehabilitated” (Mutumba 2014). Furthermore, these institutional transformations are continuously haunted by the question on the restitution of objects and human “remains”.
Although the emphasis on restitution in southern Africa has been on human “remains”, Yoko Nagahara reminds us of the significant links between illicitly acquired objects and human “remains”. These were frequently acquired during wars or in dubious circumstances. The persistent de-contextualisation of some of these collections therefore remains questionable at the very least.
The debates on restitution have also set in motion other notable practices in cases where the facts surrounding the objects are unknown (“artificial facts”) and/or where the objects act as “boundary objects”, having a force of ideas between their place of origin and the new space. Such practices consider the histories of objects and human “remains” which have acquired multi-layered configurations through their export and display.
The forms through which the objects were aesthetically re-inscribed project alternative life worlds, such as how the objects became a part of their diaspora communities, and the way in which these issues generate new communities of memory. This projection concerns itself with the future orientatedness of these objects, while still taking heed of the asymmetrical relations between the institutions which hold these collections, the communities of origin and the wider society.
The project in Dresden was therefore aimed at setting in motion these different engagements with the collections of human “remains” and objects. Dresden, a city near Berlin which has one of Europe’s largest ethnographic collections, was an apt site for such an activation.
“Activation”, a term used throughout the project denotes a form of enactment through which to bring an object into appearance and motion. This could describe an object which has either been dormant although its ripple or seismic activity is still felt in society, or an object which suddenly appears in contemporary life, causes a stir and has reverberations extending into the future.
But how do these objects become “boundary objects” which express the “potential of objects which transcend established contexts and meanings” into the future? These questions were brought to the fore by Adepeju Layiwola in her installation, “Columns of Memory”, one of the works out of twelve exhibited in Dresden. Layiwola’s installation formed part of her long-term project on Benin artworks looted by a British expedition in 1897, which were dispersed in museums in Europe and America. Layiwola powerfully brought to the fore the various trajectories associated with these objects, catapulting them into present discourse through the use of varied materials -- in this case, plastic, bronze, aluminium foil and fabric. Layiwola made models of ancestral/commemorative heads of kings, queen mother Idia and gongs (used to summon ancestors), not merely as replicas which stood in place of the looted objects, but as mnemonic “reverbs” demanding attention to artistic works, commercial circulation and institutional negotiations/contestations, both past and present (Layiwola 2009, 2014; Frieda High 2009).
There was also an acoustic presence in the installation of commemorative heads, as praises to ancestors, the Oyo bird’s cry as a bearer of news, and a gong, interacted in a resounding call for the heads’ return.