Saturday 10.8.2024 6.00 p.m. - 8.00 p.m.
Speakers: Nnenna Onuoha (artist) and Dr. Urte Evert (Museumsleiterin)
Since 2022, a special statue has been in the citadel’s display depot: the sculpture of a squatting African woman from the 1920s – without a head. The expressionistically exaggerated and racially interpreted statue (created by Arminius Hasemann (1888 – 1979)) was to be removed from the public space in 2020 and brought to Spandau Citadel. During the preparations, it was decapitated and smeared in June 2020. A political debate ensued as to whether the damaged artwork should be exhibited.
In her fi lm, Ghanaian-Nigerian artist Nnenna Onuoha processes the real questions and arguments through a speculative legal procedure: The statue’s fate is egotiated in front of a court of memorial guardians. The kneeling woman herself is present and the second half of the fi lm guides us through a dreamscape in which she walks through the grounds and the “Unveiled” exhibition. Full of longing and hope, she explores her own story and that of other wounded statues.
At the centre of the work is Onuoha’s examination of the culture of remembrance, in which certain perspectives still dominate the public space and certain histories,
particularly concerning German colonialism, are not given visibility.
