The participation of different voices is especially valuable and necessary for this exhibition. Consequently, contemporary artistic positions were integrated as interventions during its conception and design. The first impact is made by Nando Nkrumah's artistic addition to the equestrian statue of Elector Friedrich Wilhelm in front of Charlottenburg Palace. We are very pleased to add the perspectives of artist Liza May David and activist Marianne Ballé Moudoumbou, as both have supported the curators in the exhibition’s development Moreover illustrator Patricia Vester’s advisement on the topic of anti-racism played an integral part in the exhibition’s set up.
Lizza May David
Visual artist Lizza May David (b. 1975, Quezon City, Philippines) is based in Berlin, Germany. She is a painter and transdisciplinary artist and studied at the Academy of Fine Arts Nuremberg (Germany), École des Beaux Arts de Lyon (France) and University of Arts Berlin (UdK). Through abstract painting, installations, and architectural interventions, as well as collective works, she addresses the voids in personal and collective archives.
Whose Tears?
(Homage to Fred Wilson), 2023, Acrylic on canvas, 188 × 126 cm, property of artist
For the exhibition Lizza May David produced a painting with dimensions that correspond to the surroundings of porcelain figures in the depot of the SPSG, which will be exhibited. The colours convey a mood that the artist picked up while visiting the depot as well as participating in the workshops on exhibition conception. The teardrops are a reference to the work of the American artist Fred Wilson, who has been questioning the Western canon in museum collections since the 1980s.
Marianne Ballé Moudoumbou
Marianne Ballé Moudoumbou is a certified interpreter. She is involved in a broad alliance for an official recognition of the genocides and crimes committed during the "Maafa" - Great Destruction - and for appropriate compensation. She is involved in many organizations: as spokesperson of Pan-African Women's Empowerment & Liberation (PAWLO) - Masoso e. V., co-founder and deputy chairperson of the Central Council of the African Community in Germany (Zentralrat der Afrikanischen Gemeinde in Deutschland e. V), current spokeswoman of the Representative Council of the Federal Conference of Migrant Organizations (Bundeskonferenz der Migrant*innenorganisation : BKMO). She was a member of the General Assembly of the Potsdam Chamber of Commerce and Industry, she is a member of the Speaker's Council of VENROB e. V., the network of development policy groups, initiatives and associations in the state of Brandenburg, as well as a co-founder of the Committee for an African Memorial and a member of the Brandenburg State Integration Advisory Council. She is currently a guest lecturer at the Alice-Salomon-Hochschule (ASH) Berlin and leads the sub-project VIW-Vitamin P-PAWLO-Palanca-SdE Chancenpatenschaft in Brandenburg.
Correspondances voilées
2023 © Marianne Ballé Moudoumbou
The poem written by Marianne Ballé Moudoumbou gives appropriate wording to the experiences and perspectives of African/Black people at the Prussian court. Her words and questions make the (in)visibility and fragmentation of the biographies of trafficked people visible and tangible.
Emeka Okereke
Emeka Okereke is a Nigerian visual artist and scholar who lives and works between Lagos and Berlin. In 2015, his work was exhibited at the 56th Venice Biennale, in the context of an installation titled A Trans-African Worldspace. Emeka Okereke is the founder and artistic director of Invisible Borders Trans-African Project, an artist-led initiative that addresses gaps and misconceptions posed by frontiers dividing the 54 countries of the African continent.
In 2022, he was a visiting lecturer / scholar at the Indiana University in Bloomington, USA. He is currently teaching a self-designed course titled "Exploring a Void", at the Berlin University of Arts (UDK Berlin).
Okereke's work oscillates between diverse mediums. He employs photography, video, poetry and performative interventions in the exploration of one over-arching theme: that of borders.
Tracing Presence(s)… of place, body and time
David Felix Esser (sound design)
2023
Artist Emeka Okereke followed the restoration of two exoticizing and stereotypical statues, both key works in the exhibition. Only recently, were they discovered at a depot, assaulted, damaged, and discarded, with no record of how this came to be. The mysteriously missing episode in the genealogy of the statues has opened up a space for questions, reflections, and re-imagination of history, which this photographic performative intervention explores.
Patricia Vester
Patricia Vester is an illustrator specializing in process support, empowerment and diversity training. What moves her gets illustrated. Patricia Vester illustrates for socio-cultural projects and initiatives and has been passionately supporting and empowering the Black community with adequate illustrations for years.
She is Artist in Residence 2023 of the Koordinierungsstelle Koloniales Erbe Thüringen KET at the Universities of Jena and Erfurt and she offers anti-discrimination counseling in Brandenburg. For the Prussian Palaces and Gardens Foundation, she works on the development, training & implementation of racism-critical guided tours at Charlottenburg Palace, in addition to the exhibition intervention.
gelebt
2023
Illustrator Patricia Vester explores the life of Bilillee Ajiamé Machbuba from an Afro-German perspective.
In the format of a graphic novel, she relays the story of the death mask (imprints of face, hand and foot) and critically questions museum practice. In the exhibition, her illustrations will be on view across the room and contextualized with the plaster casts of Bililee's death mask.
In her words:
The story of Bilillee Ajiamé Machbuba, probably the best-known girl enslaved by a German prince in the 19th century, whose story has not received enough respect and rectification in the parks of Bad Muskau and Branitz Castle until today, is told here from the perspective of a Black German, asister, a mourner. A mourning the impossibility, the capitalist postcolonial treatment and the distortion of history, which happened to the history of this girl.
An artistic intervention and an empowerment, workbook, statement and compassionate document that at the same time questions: How does museum work today? How much courage do I need to retell a story? Who owns biographies and who is allowed to tell them and how?
