Objects tell stories. Ancient artifacts can give a glimpse into past ways of life, current products can reflect one’s habits, and speculative products can act as physical representations of what society and individuals value or need. The list of knowledge that can be shared and gained through objects goes on. However, the reliability and dependence on objects as physical manifestations of storytelling are put into question within the lense of exploring decolonization in museum spaces. How objects are seen, classified, visually presented, contextualized, and explained is inescapably biased. Objects determined to be representative of “primal” ways of life can reinforce a eurocentric perspective of what an “advanced society” means. Putting an overwhelming amount of objects in a display case without proper labeling or explanation, similar to the format of a trophy case, can contribute to silencing the narrative of the humans who have used the objects while instead placing emphasis on the collector of the object. While objects can be used as platforms to share culture and knowledge, they can also be used as tokens to represent an individual or institution's power.
When talking to curation and archival experts at The Black Archives, Museum Volkenkunde, and the Tropenmuseum, I continued to reflect on the concept of “seeing is believing” in relation to learning about the history of colonization. Should objects relating to slavery, genocide, and other forms of oppression be publicly seen and put on display? Is the information given to these objects reliable when they have remained in possession of white individuals and institutions who do not belong to the same culture as the objects themselves? Should we trust the metadata that is associated with objects if we don’t know the justification behind an object’s assigned labels? What audience is prioritized or benefits from seeing historical objects? Is an object or the information it represents more valuable? Who gets to decide what an object represents? Is “seeing is believing” true? These are questions I continue to grapple with.
In this visual piece I continue to explore the concept of perception and it's impact when viewing large themes while referencing "The Treachery of Images", a painting by Magritte.
