Events

How can art help us tell polyphonic stories? What stories are concealed in historical photographs? And how have contemporary artists revealed these narratives? With “A Kind of Paradise”, Museum Rietberg presents a group exhibition that is the first to comprehensively explore this phenomenon in global contemporary art. Internationally acclaimed artists from and members of diasporas of Africa, the Americas, Asia, Australia, and Oceania have engaged with colonial-era visual material. Their works – poetic, critical, and visionary – explore how such images define identity, history, and a sense of belonging, and how they may be reinterpreted. These works reveal a healing power that transcends historical specificities and can touch us all.

A group of twenty renowned artists explore the current state of this photographic heritage across four thematic sections in “A Kind of Paradise – Colonial-Era Photography in Contemporary Art”, acting as archivists, counterpoints to the colonial gaze, protective forces, and powerful storytellers who make space for hidden stories. Formed of photographs, textiles, films, and sculpture, their collages expand the medium’s boundaries and bring together questions about their own identity and collective memories.

With Sammy Baloji (DR Congo), Mary Enoch Elizabeth Baxter (USA), Raphaël Barontini (France), Daniel Boyd (Australia), Andrea Chung (USA), Omar Victor Diop (Senegal) & Lee Shulman (UK), Sasha Huber (Switzerland), Yuki Kihara (Samoa), Cédric Kouamé (Côte d'Ivoire), Dinh Q. Lê (Vietnam), Dimakatso Mathopa (South Africa), Tuli Mekondjo (Namibia), Tshepiso Moropa (South Africa), Aline Motta (Brazil), Frida Orupabo (Norway), Rosana Paulino (Brazil), Wendy Red Star (USA), David Shongo (DR Congo), Zenaéca Singh (South Africa).