Research Area

Contested collections in museums and universities – inventories that originated in colonial or other violent contexts – document the intertwining of scientific and artistic practice in the 19th and 20th centuries with colonial structures and National Socialist ideology. This dissertation project is dedicated to analysing artistic engagements with such historically burdened collections of National Socialist and colonial provenance, whose critical research and reappraisal in German-speaking countries has only been taking place since the 1980s and the beginning of the 21st century. One of the central case studies focuses on the work of Christine Borland, in particular her work with (palaeo-)anthropological facial casts and reconstructions for the Skulptur Projekte Münster 1997, which were located in the anatomical teaching collection of the University of Münster. The research project aims to explore the broader contexts of the work and, on the one hand, to reconstruct the origins and contexts of use of the collection objects; on the other hand, Borland’s practice is situated in dialogue with other artistic works against the backdrop of digital technologies and contactless reproduction methods, as well as postcolonial theories and approaches to memory culture.