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Exhibition number AW100

Audioguide

Welcome to our exhibition The Struggle of Memory.

Oftentimes a single scent, sound, touch or image is enough to trigger a powerful memory. Memories are invisible, evasive, unstable, and uncontrollable. Sometimes we remember things we would rather forget. Other times, we struggle to recall. Our individual memories shape our sense of self, while our collective memories enable us to preserve social unity and cohesion.
The exhibition title is taken from The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, a compilation of short stories by the Czech author Milan Kundera published in 1979. In that book Kundera states that “the first step in liquidating a people is to erase its memory. Destroy its books, its culture, its history. Then have somebody write new books, manufacture a new culture, invent a new history. Before long that nation will begin to forget what it is and what it was. The world around it will forget even faster.”

Since the Portuguese first edged their way around the African coast in the 15th century, the history of Africa has been characterised by such struggles. Initially the Portuguese crown and Jesuit missionaries forged peaceful links with the Kingdom of the Kongo. However, this did not last long.

The slave trade, followed by colonialism, caused deep and long-lasting damage. 190 years have passed since the abolition of slavery, and it has been more than 60 years since most African countries gained independence, but the former colonial powers have only recently begun to return the human remains and looted artefacts. The restitution of these items is however mostly symbolic; it is difficult to rebuild connections to a long-lost past. In this sense art provides a real opportunity, a “generous vessel that can hold together the burden of memory and the hope of forgiveness” as a Nigerian playwright described it.

Part 1 of this exhibition brings together artworks that explore, in different ways, how the body absorbs, processes, stores, and recalls memories. Many of the artists exploit the gap between personal and official narratives, grappling with the precarity of memory and responding to histories of dislocation and loss. Most of the artists were either born or are based in Africa or have a connection to the continent.

They work with fragments and traces and utilise repetition and shadow play. They stress the importance of language in remembering and resisting and encourage us to employ all our senses to remember. They explore the slippages between fact and fiction, imaginatively reconstructing connections to the past in the void left by History.

At some point, experiencing this exhibition will become one of your memories. We hope that memory will be an insightful and inspiring one! Enjoy your visit.

Further artworks from this exhibition