The haunting of colonialism (completed project)

Description

This study turns to the British colonial destruction of the Kingdom of Benin in 1897, following the Berlin Conference of 1884–5, to examine the current issue of provenance and restitution of the Benin artworks that were cruelly deported to the metropoles, auctioned, named and displayed as ethnographic curiosity. It inquires into how restitution as the return of artworks speculates the neoliberal future and how provenance retains the colonial technology of domination.

Key publication

Moradi, Fazil (2022) "Catastrophic Art." in Public Culture 2 (97): 243–264.

Team members

Fazil Moradi

Research Fellow at the Johannesburg Institute for Advanced Study (JIAS)

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