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Reversed Silhouettes of European History

Reversed Silhouettes of European History

In the work ‘Reversed Silhouettes of European History’ I have investigated how formal and informal, conscious and unconscious education has informed my own Eurocentric understanding of the world.

Oscilating between my own German childhood where ‘ethnic masquerades’ as an ‘Indian’ were quite common and my experiences with the Dutch way of Eurocentric history-lessons where nautic heroism and nationalism were long enough common sense I use the method of collage to combine words with images from those private and other, more institutional archives (quotes from newspapers or articles, pictures from family pictures, Museum Bronbeek, Rijksmuseum)

In that proces I have reversed the system of the silhouette: that which is actually depicted are holes.

Title: Reversed Silhouettes of European History

Date: 2018

Seizes: 70 x 50 cm

How to overcome the world vision based on the division of the West and the Rest?

What is needed to unlearn my own biases?

What can I do to de-colonize history lessons?

How to teach history from a global perspective?

Exposition

In 2017 curator Youri Appelo invited me for the inspiring exposition In the Pursuit of: Alternative Truths at the artists space, Pact, formerly known as Expoplu. My works got very good company from works made my Lado Darakhvelidze, Domenique Himmelsbach de Vries, Lyubov Matyunina, Rune Peitersen, Belit Sağ.

That exhibition had combined works of art as a visual analyses of the way we gain knowledge that all shapes our perception on truth and reality. 

Article of Fenne Saedt: Alternative truths Karl Marx in een bad vol blauwe glitters.

Sources

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