Suse Weber continues the work she started in FLACC Genk. During her residency in the Flacc she did research on the Congorama. Now she will finish the project in AIR Antwerpen. The presentation will happen in Troubelyn.
Various observations and experiences provided the starting material for the emblematic sculpture Formula: Congorama. My visits to Africa in 1993 and 1998 made me curious, and in Spring 2008 I visited the Koninklijk Museum voor Midden-Afrika for the second time, this time to see the special exhibition Congorama 1958. Here I discovered the documentary material on a mechanical miniature model of the Congolese. I noticed that the depiction was limited solely to everyday rituals like preparing food, fetching water, and farm labor ñ i.e., an ethnological picture was created. A telephone provided visitors with supplementary explanations. The ratio between the dimensions of the visitors and the miniature Congolese became an illustration of power relations. The Congolese as a doll.
This postcolonial depiction from 1958 reminded me of my own experience of how the history of a country is written and later evaluated ñ and of how this conflicts with my own personal memory and perception. In the same museum in 2006, I had already discovered a showcase from the 19th century in which an ape and an African were set in comparison. This memory led me to visit a zoo in Antwerp, and, as I had to note, a connection resulted. The ape house was decorated with prop-like elements, for example a stairway to a temple (presumably of Latin American origin) and an African relief reminiscent of the bronze gate from the Kingdom of Dahomey (mask and lack of perspective) in combination with a European hunting scene (bodily stance and arrangement of figures). I was equally astonished at the use of industrial materials such as blue plastic barrels, ropes, and buckets as a substitute for the jungle ñ a kind of image of a home habitat made of a landscape of ruins and a Belgian industrial jungle. In the middle of this jungle landscape was a pillar fragment of a Gordian knot. The use of the rope and the Gordian knot reminded me of my visit to the Nationaal Scheepvaartmuseum Antwerpen in 2007, where I discovered a collection of knots. As early as 2001, I had seen an old leather samurai uniform that was held together by knots. As I later learned, this was script, a precursor to present-day Japanese characters. Since I had already been in Antwerp for a while, I had often encountered the Flemish flag, due to the domestic political conflicts of the time. I saw the lion as a heraldic symbol in a wide variety of forms: first with a Baroque appearance, later in depictions from the 1920s, and then in those of the 1930s. The presence of the Flemish flag led me to decide to place the aforementioned aspects in the year 2009, i.e., in a landscape of flags. My visit to the 2008 Ijzerwake festival confirmed my ideas. All these various aspects came together as an overall picture and developed an inner logic of signs. The phenomenon of the depiction of an image of society via a foreign society confronts me constantly, like every media-molded person, not least as an artist in another country. My aim is to develop a work that moves away from ethnological, tourist, and finally voyeuristic approaches.
More on Suse Weber: www.suse-weber.de
Various observations and experiences provided the starting material for the emblematic sculpture Formula: Congorama. My visits to Africa in 1993 and 1998 made me curious, and in Spring 2008 I visited the Koninklijk Museum voor Midden-Afrika for the second time, this time to see the special exhibition Congorama 1958. Here I discovered the documentary material on a mechanical miniature model of the Congolese. I noticed that the depiction was limited solely to everyday rituals like preparing food, fetching water, and farm labor ñ i.e., an ethnological picture was created. A telephone provided visitors with supplementary explanations. The ratio between the dimensions of the visitors and the miniature Congolese became an illustration of power relations. The Congolese as a doll.
This postcolonial depiction from 1958 reminded me of my own experience of how the history of a country is written and later evaluated ñ and of how this conflicts with my own personal memory and perception. In the same museum in 2006, I had already discovered a showcase from the 19th century in which an ape and an African were set in comparison. This memory led me to visit a zoo in Antwerp, and, as I had to note, a connection resulted. The ape house was decorated with prop-like elements, for example a stairway to a temple (presumably of Latin American origin) and an African relief reminiscent of the bronze gate from the Kingdom of Dahomey (mask and lack of perspective) in combination with a European hunting scene (bodily stance and arrangement of figures). I was equally astonished at the use of industrial materials such as blue plastic barrels, ropes, and buckets as a substitute for the jungle ñ a kind of image of a home habitat made of a landscape of ruins and a Belgian industrial jungle. In the middle of this jungle landscape was a pillar fragment of a Gordian knot. The use of the rope and the Gordian knot reminded me of my visit to the Nationaal Scheepvaartmuseum Antwerpen in 2007, where I discovered a collection of knots. As early as 2001, I had seen an old leather samurai uniform that was held together by knots. As I later learned, this was script, a precursor to present-day Japanese characters. Since I had already been in Antwerp for a while, I had often encountered the Flemish flag, due to the domestic political conflicts of the time. I saw the lion as a heraldic symbol in a wide variety of forms: first with a Baroque appearance, later in depictions from the 1920s, and then in those of the 1930s. The presence of the Flemish flag led me to decide to place the aforementioned aspects in the year 2009, i.e., in a landscape of flags. My visit to the 2008 Ijzerwake festival confirmed my ideas. All these various aspects came together as an overall picture and developed an inner logic of signs. The phenomenon of the depiction of an image of society via a foreign society confronts me constantly, like every media-molded person, not least as an artist in another country. My aim is to develop a work that moves away from ethnological, tourist, and finally voyeuristic approaches.
More on Suse Weber: www.suse-weber.de
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