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 Nigerian playwright Wole Soyinka described it.
Part 1 of this exhibition brought together artworks that explore, in different ways, how the body absorbs, processes, stores, and recalls memories. Part 2 of this exhibition now focuses on how memories are inscribed, bringing together artworks that highlight in different ways the traces of history all around us while proposing alternative, sometimes subversive strategies of looking at the past.
Many of the artists exploit the gap between personal and official narratives, grappling with the precarity of memory and unreliability of history. Drawing our attention to the overlooked, collapsing time through montage, employing humour, and dabbling with the absurd, stressing 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.
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 Nigerian playwright Wole Soyinka described it.
Part 1 of this exhibition brought together artworks that explore, in different ways, how the body absorbs, processes, stores, and recalls memories. Part 2 of this exhibition now focuses on how memories are inscribed, bringing together artworks that highlight in different ways the traces of history all around us while proposing alternative, sometimes subversive strategies of looking at the past.
Many of the artists exploit the gap between personal and official narratives, grappling with the precarity of memory and unreliability of history. Drawing our attention to the overlooked, collapsing time through montage, employing humour, and dabbling with the absurd, stressing 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
Sammy Baloji
Untitled, 2018
Lubaina Himid
Dreaming Has a Share in History, 2016
Zohra Opoku
‘I have arisen from my egg which is in the lands of the secrets. I give my mouth to myself (so that) I may speak with it in the presence of the gods of the Duat. My hand shall not be turned away from the council of the great god Osiris, Lord of Rosetau, this one who is at the top of the dais. I have come (so that) I may do what my heart desires in the Island of Fire, extinguihing the fire which hcomes forth.', 2020
Dineo Seshee Bopape
Lerole: footnotes (The struggle of memory against forgetting), 2017