Black Art(ist) Residency
Look Closer - African Art in The Himmelheber Archives
Musum Rietberg. 2023
Zürich, Switzerland
The 5-month artist residency program formed part of the exhibition ‘Look Closer – African Art in the Hans Himmelheber Archives’.Working across multiple disciplines, artists contribute to the sociocritical and decolonial topics introduced through the archives.The program deconstructs the colonial archive to ask questions like:
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“How does knowledge about the production of art in Africa come about? What do words like 'art' and 'artist' actually mean? What is the role of African agents and perspectives in the production of this knowledge?
The project formed part of Museum Rietberg’s ongoing dialogue with Black and African diasporic artists based in Switzerland, centring on critical topics introduced through the Hans Himmelheber collections.
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It provided an opportunity to foreground new perspectives from emerging artists whose practices explored and redefined the concepts, contexts, and meanings historically ascribed to African art. Their positioning as Black diasporic artists enabled an alternative mode of knowledge-making—one rooted in lived experience and the cultural realities of diasporic communities.
Drawing on the Himmelheber collection and archives, participating artists were invited to engage deeply with the historical material and respond to the themes introduced in the museum’s exhibition. This continuous, research-led engagement allowed them to observe, question, and interpret curatorial decisions and archival legacies, while developing creative responses that reflect their individual and collective positionalities.
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Through their artistic work, insights, and dialogue, the project sought to explore how diasporic artists—and by extension, the communities they are connected to—relate to both the historical and contemporary issues embedded in museum collections.
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Participants reflected on themes such as Art for art’s sake?, restitution, and the tensions between Western museological frameworks and more global, inclusive approaches to interpretation. In doing so, the project aimed to generate a layered and nuanced perspective from within the Black diaspora—one that challenges the role of colonial archives in shaping knowledge and encourages new, community-driven forms of cultural continuity and critique.
Exhibiting Artists: Cherry-Ann Davis, Teddy Pratt, Titilayo Adebayo (Newkyyd)
