Artists

Majewski, Antje

Mandu Yenu, 2019
Courtesy: Antje Majewski; (c) Antje Majewski/VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn; Foto: Jens Ziehe, Berlin

Antje Majewski’s installation Le Trône (The Throne, 2019) finds the white (1) German artist contributing both critically and artistically to the ongoing debate surrounding the potential restitution of artifacts brought to Germany during the colonial period. The multi-part work consists of both an oil and acrylic on canvas painting showing a mirror image of Ibrahim Njoya’s throne and a film featuring interviews with figures including Hadj Sultan Ibrahim Mbombo Njoya.
The oil rendering, entitled Mandu Yenu (Reversed), is based on an official press photograph provided by the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin that already depicts throne in reverse. Consequently, the painting - which is destined to be exhibited at the Foumban Palace Museum in Cameroon - strikingly highlights the absence of the original in the place in which it was created. The two-dimensionality of this purposefully realistic painting can be read as a silent protest against the treatment and handling of looted art, which drain the vitality from objects that have already been taken by force.
Interviews shown in the film - including those with El Hadj Sultan Ibrahim Mbombo Njoya, the great grandson of Sultan Ibrahim Njoya, and Nji Oumarou Nchare, director of the Palace Museum in Foumban - add depth to a number of considerations raised by the painting: What is the throne? Is it a museum piece? An extraordinary piece of artistic heritage for the Bamun people? Or is it an embodiment of energies, of sacred power? What might engagement with the throne consist in - what could its restitution involve beyond European notions of law?
Lastly, we see Majewski pointing to her own social position in the fabric of colonial power, which remains a force to this day. At once cautious and inquisitive, her work addresses one of the knowledge systems that created her socially powerful position (i.e. whiteness) in the first place. Her own position is inescapably part of the work: After all, the piece - and the dialogue around it - reflect part of the still-ongoing colonial power imbalance.

(1) This term is not a self-designation, but a description of a reality of people who do not experience racism. white is written in small italics and reveals privileges that are often not named as such. So the term is not about skin shades, but about the visualisation of different access to social resources. “White,” Critical Diversity Blog, Berlin University of the Arts, s.v., https://criticaldiversity.udk-berlin.de/glossar/weiss/.

Text: Josephine Apraku; englische Übersetzung: Amy Patton

Antje Majewski’s installation Le Trône (The Throne, 2019) finds the white (1) German artist contributing both critically and artistically to the ongoing debate surrounding the potential restitution of artifacts brought to Germany during the colonial period. The multi-part work consists of both an oil and acrylic on canvas painting showing a mirror image of Ibrahim Njoya’s throne and a film featuring interviews with figures including Hadj Sultan Ibrahim Mbombo Njoya.
The oil rendering, entitled Mandu Yenu (Reversed), is based on an official press photograph provided by the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin that already depicts throne in reverse. Consequently, the painting - which is destined to be exhibited at the Foumban Palace Museum in Cameroon - strikingly highlights the absence of the original in the place in which it was created. The two-dimensionality of this purposefully realistic painting can be read as a silent protest against the treatment and handling of looted art, which drain the vitality from objects that have already been taken by force.
Interviews shown in the film - including those with El Hadj Sultan Ibrahim Mbombo Njoya, the great grandson of Sultan Ibrahim Njoya, and Nji Oumarou Nchare, director of the Palace Museum in Foumban - add depth to a number of considerations raised by the painting: What is the throne? Is it a museum piece? An extraordinary piece of artistic heritage for the Bamun people? Or is it an embodiment of energies, of sacred power? What might engagement with the throne consist in - what could its restitution involve beyond European notions of law?
Lastly, we see Majewski pointing to her own social position in the fabric of colonial power, which remains a force to this day. At once cautious and inquisitive, her work addresses one of the knowledge systems that created her socially powerful position (i.e. whiteness) in the first place. Her own position is inescapably part of the work: After all, the piece - and the dialogue around it - reflect part of the still-ongoing colonial power imbalance.

(1) This term is not a self-designation, but a description of a reality of people who do not experience racism. white is written in small italics and reveals privileges that are often not named as such. So the term is not about skin shades, but about the visualisation of different access to social resources. “White,” Critical Diversity Blog, Berlin University of the Arts, s.v., https://criticaldiversity.udk-berlin.de/glossar/weiss/.

Text: Josephine Apraku; englische Übersetzung: Amy Patton

Mandu Yenu, 2019
Courtesy: Antje Majewski; (c) Antje Majewski/VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn; Foto: Jens Ziehe, Berlin