Paper short abstract:

The paper explores a critical intervention by young Black Hamburg artist at a museum exhibition that claims to be decolonial. The activists appropriate the space by creating a counter exhibition to critically engage with the city’s colonial heritage and its postcolonial commemoration practices.

Paper long abstract:

The observed intervention was motivated by an exhibition "Hey Hamburg! Do you know Duala Manga Bell?", dedicated to the life and assassination of the Cameroonian king during the German colonial period. The group’s name Immer.Wieder.Widerstand (Resistance.Again.And.Again) is self-explaining - the young Black artists came together to challenge the way the museum, which until recently carried the colonial name “Museum für Völkerkunde”, claims to decolonize itself.

German colonial history has been practically erased from today's historiography, although its legacy is unmistakable and decisively shapes the present: the wealth of the city of Hamburg, the racist structures of the German society as well as the white German superiority, can all be traced back to that time.

Acknowledging the lack of educational resources young people created their own learning spaces, by inviting Black postcolonial activists and scholars to a series of workshops. In that process, the group developed a set of questions to guide their intervention:

"How is addressing of the repressed violent past by the museum compatible with exhibiting looted art? How is it possible that European museums still refuse to return looted objects and yet claim to be decolonial? What does it mean for people who have a biographical connection to such looted objects, which often have spiritual connotations, to see them meaninglessly exhibited? How do Black people feel in white institutions and how are they received there?"

Inspired by the joint learning and intensive exchange, the group realised their ideas artistically and presented them as a counter exhibition.