repatriation@THEMET150 focuses on the museum as a site of activism to explore decolonial practices.
Currently centering around The Met (but will expand to other museums in the West/Global North), this project creates newly reimagined placards and labels to recontextualize the framing of these stolen artifacts by detailing their specific provenance and acquisition. I am seeking funders, artists, researchers, and more to help me leverage metaphoric repatriation practices and disrupt the dissemination of colonial heritage.
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The project addresses two main aspects.
1. I would like to highlight the 150th anniversary of The Met, This also begs the question: how do you dismantle colonial heritage within an institution that has been 150 years in the making?
2. Another important aspect is the leveraging of repatriation practices to enable the framing of the project. The Merriam-Webster dictionary states: “to restore or return to the country of origin, allegiance, or citizenship” (“repatriation”). What I find particularly fascinating is that this definition also covers citizenship, which begs to bring a more humanist approach to the work I am doing. Repatriation is not only about returning the object to its country of origin, but also acknowledging the violence and trauma inflicted onto the cultural heritage and people of the country of origin through the illegal transfer of ownership.
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For more information on the artist, please visit the |ABOUT THE ARTIST| page.