Shared History/Decolonising the Image

15 May‚ 04 June 2006 at W139, Amsterdam

curated by Delphine Bedel and Sophie Berebi

How is decolonisation represented through images, in popular culture, film, photography and art? Where are the images of decolonisation? What is the legacy of those images in our culture? What does it mean to ‘decolonise’ an image? These are some of the questions this project in four parts seeks to raise and put forward for discussion.

International and interdisciplinary in its scope, Shared History/Decolonising the Image combines an art exhibition, a video lounge and a three-day academic conference with a film programme presented in four different venues throughout Amsterdam.

photo credits Ilya Rabinovich

Shared History/Decolonising the Image

Native New Yorkers

In this one-minute videoloop entitled Native New Yorkers, a deerskin is concentrically cut-up; deconstructed and via a time-lapse of transitional images, unravels.

New World Order

Elsewhere in the exhibition, two texts are facing each other, one print lighter than the other but both formatted to look the same size, and have the same layout. The texts come from two different sources, an English textbook, the other a letter from the Munsee (Native Americans) addressed to President Zachary Taylor. Though both offer a metaphor for measuring the value of an amount of land, the way in which the anecdote has been transmitted within the narrative is marked by a distinct divergence.