Participating artists:Susanne Keichel, Kanak Attack, Duc Ngo Ngoc, Dan The Nguyen, Spot_The_Silence (Rixxa Wendland & Christian Obermuller), Thanh Nguyen Phuong & Bouizedkane/Jerat/Konaté/Reimann/Wolff, Peggy Buth, Talya Feldmann, Rajkamal, Kahlon, Maria Pfeifer, Minh Duc Pham, Su-Ran Sichling
Venue:Stadtmuseum Dresden
Wilsdruffer Str. 2 (Landhausstraße Eingang)
01067 Dresden
Partner:An exhibition in cooperation with the Kunsthaus Dresden - Städtische Galerie für Gegenwartskunst and in collaboration with the Ausländerrat Dresden e. V., the Chair of Modern and Contemporary History and Didactics of History and the Centrum Frankreich | Frankophonie (CFF) at the Institute of Romance Studies at the TU Dresden.
The cooperation project between the Stadtmuseum and the Kunsthaus Dresden addresses a gap in the city's historiography and culture of remembrance. Although people were put on display at the princely court in Dresden as early as the 16th century for the purpose of entertainment and supposed education, and the Dresden Zoo was one of the most important venues for human or ethnic shows in the German Empire from the 1870s onward, there has hardly been any awareness of Dresden's human shows in the collective memory.
At the same time, human shows have recently received increased attention in the context of postcolonial research and activist scenes. From this perspective, the shows are considered colonial injustices that need to be problematized and remembered. During colonialism, such human shows transported and produced stereotypical images and stigmatized the people on display as members of inferior peoples and "races." This regime of the gaze, which aims at hierarchies, lives on in racism to this day. The workshop exhibition links the researched history with the present - multi-perspectively, critically and participatively.
