Colonial practises and structures can be traced throughout earlier centuries, before German colonialism of the 19th and early 20th centuries, as well as afterwards. In this light, the special exhibition is looking to explore the connection between Germany’s longer colonial history and how they persist today. Based on the scant information that has been preserved over time, the special exhibition attempts to reconstruct the biographies of people after they were forcibly brought to Berlin and Potsdam. These biographies highlight both the ways they were able to socially assimilate and how they resisted the conditions of their lives at court. In addition, the exhibition examines non-European works in the collections that have long been interpreted within strictly European frameworks. As a result, these works were culturally re-appropriated and alienated from their original uses.

The exhibition themes were developed together with various experts in a joint process over the course of five workshops. An artistic intervention in the courtyard of Charlottenburg Palace by Nando Nkrumah brings further positions to the exhibition, while the artists Emeka Okereke, Lizza May David, Patricia Vester, the interpreter and cultural scientist Marianne Ballé Moudoumbou und the art historian Dr. SinhaRaja Tammita-Delgoda offer important and critical counter perspectives to the historical objects displayed in the exhibition rooms.

When? Where?
4 July - 31 October 2023
Charlottenburg Palace (New Wing)
Spandauer Damm 10 - 22
14059 Berlin

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