A Kind of Paradise, on display until the 6th of September at Museum Rietberg in Zurich, re-examines colonial photography through a lens of contemporary art. With works from twenty artists grappling with colonial memory (and current realities), the exhibition examines the links between past and present under the guiding words of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: “When we reject the single story, when we realise that there is never a single story about any place, we regain a kind of paradise.”
The exhibition, split into four sections, targets the indignities of colonialism and subverts them through an empathetic, humanity-imbuing lens. The first section, Shapeshifters, questions the politics of representation, stitching together archives that expose the vulnerability of history. What is presented holds the same weight as what is not, with art that plays into the ephemera of a physical photo. The next section, Confrontation, superimposes unspoken reality onto imagined clichés in a commentary on the lasting cultural attitudes that exist as a result of colonialism. Artists insert themselves into the past from the present to comment on the inherently hierarchical nature of colonialism.
In Care, artists alter images of exploitation to give voice to colonised peoples and connect artists (sometimes physically) to the past. In the Photo Fantastic, artists use methods of Saidiya Hartman’s critical fabulation to thread together historical fragments for radical futures and reimagined modernities. The exhibition critically engages with the museum’s archive, using intermittent displays of photography from Africa and Asia in the 19th and 20th centuries to connect each section.
A Kind of Paradise is a transgressive exhibition, especially given the exploitative history of provenance and museums themselves — specifically museums focused on the ‘other,’ that is Indigenous peoples of Africa, Asia, the Americas, and Oceania. However, this connective tissue is what makes the exhibition so thought-provoking. Viewers must contend with the question of what their role is in the long-running narrative of colonial art. In fact, Zurich residents are invited to share their personal photo archives and the stories attached to them. With the works of artists like Wendy Red Star, Sasha Huber, Omar Victor Diop, and Lee Shulman, the Rietberg reaches a productive point of tension in art history between colonial self-affirmation and institutional rejection.
Yuki Kihara, First Impressions: Paul Gauguin, 2018 © Yuki Kihara, courtesy the artist and Milford Galleries
inh Q. Lê, Crossing the Farther Shore, 2014, © Dinh Q. Lê
Rosana Paulino, Das Avós (From Grandmothers), 2019, © Rosana Paulino, courtesy the artist and Mendes, Wood DM
Cédric Kouamé, from the series The Gifted Mold, 2012, Côte d’Ivoire © Cédric Kouamé, courtesy the artist
