Paper short abstract:

Based on an ethnography of a newly created ancestor mask in the Afro-Surinamese Winti community, this paper analyzes the intersections of cultural heritage, religion, and belonging in the Netherlands.

Paper long abstract:

This presentation showcases a project by Marian Markelo, a descendent of enslaved Africans and the most prominent priestess of the afro-Surinamese Winti religion in the Netherlands, and Boris van Berkum, a Dutch artist. Their project is called the "African Renaissance" in the Winti religion, referring to the "re-introduction" of the African ancestors' religious art in the Winti religion. At the core of the project is a collection of masks.

In the Dutch Africa Museum, six West African masks were selected and then scanned using portable 3D scanning equipment. The scan delivered digital "point-cloud coordinates", which were computer rendered, and then milled into polyurethane foam. The mask was presented to the public during the 150th anniversary of abolition in 2013, and was later acquired by the Amsterdam Museum. It is now understood as part of the city's cultural heritage. In other words, to the extent that cultural heritage gives material shape to the identity of a group, the mask has become a statement about the composition of Amsterdam as a polis, a political community.

In this presentation I investigate the ways this ancestor mask partakes in a wider field of cultural heritage and the politics of citizenship and belonging. I argue that the mask can be understood as a postsecular object that is both cultural heritage and a sacred object. I investigate how through this object a postsecular mode of belonging emerges that critically engages with traditions of secularism and citizenship.