FULLY BOOKED: Remixing the Future: Artist talk Diana Agunbiade-Kolawole

What is the fascination of the “west” with collecting artefacts and objects from other cultures? Ethnographic collections are seen and often understood to be concrete validation of the cultures they express. They are witnesses to cultural diversity and ”otherness” yet without the agency of the people or cultures these artefacts and objects represent.

Museum-based anthropologists have had a critical role to play in this process in many countries: serving as the physical and scholarly keys to the ethnographic collections for the public. How much of the information is legitimate and how is this shaped by biased and deliberate misinformation, by the dealers, collectors, and those who have had their treasures carved away? The talk explores knowledge, power, money and false narratives.