With “Rethink Shinola,” scholar and artist Rebekah Modrak has created a biting, minutely researched critique of an appropriative re-branding of Detroit.
colonialism
Posted inArt
An Artist’s Powerful Letter on Post-Hurricane Puerto Rico
Yasmín Hernández lives in Puerto Rico, and instead of attending a panel discussion at El Museo del Barrio in New York last week she sent this letter outlining the realities of post-hurricane life for an artist.
Posted inArt
Reflections on Asmara’s Modernist (and Colonial) Dream
It’s hard not to question why Asmara was named a World Heritage Site, especially as the country is reeling from decades of hardship.
Posted inBooks
The Racist Caricatures of African Soldiers that Soothed French Colonial Anxieties
With a Weapon and a Grin, a new book by Stephan Likosky, traces the iconography used to infantilize African soldiers who fought in the French army during World War I.
Posted inFilm
The Complicated Legacy of Gertrude Bell, the Englishwoman Who Helped Colonize the Middle East
A new film looks at the life of the female explorer, spy, translator, and archaeologist, who’s been largely written out of history.
Posted inArt
Deluxe Redux: ‘Asia in Amsterdam’ at the Peabody Essex
SALEM, Mass. — The Dutch East India Company wrested control of the Asian spice trade from the Spanish and Portuguese, went on to own virtually all of Indonesia, and monopolized trade with Japan for 200 years.
Posted inOpinion
A Patronizing Argument Against Cultural Repatriation
In the past few decades, cultural institutions in the West have increasingly felt pressure to return artifacts acquired through questionable means during the colonial era.
Posted inArt
How Cartography Helped Make Colonial Empires
If you want to claim a territory, it’s good to have a map to show what’s yours. Defining Lines: Cartography in the Age of Empire at the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University examines how maps were a form of political control and public perception by Western colonial powers from the 16th and 20th centuries.
Posted inArt
The Real Reason(s) Indians Are Obsessed with Switzerland
BERKELEY, Calif. — Alicia Eler’s recent Hyperallergic post “Searching for the Switzerland of India” raises a host of issues regarding the colonial legacies at play in modern India without dissecting any of them.
Posted inNews
Indigenous Action Highlights British Museum’s Role in Colonialism
Last Friday, January 11, Idle No More London staged a UK solidarity action in London’s British Museum. Standing in solidarity with the Idle No More movement, which originated last November with the First Nations, Metis, and Inuit communities in Canada, members of Idle No More London chose the museum that is widely believed to be the largest repository of colonial artifacts in the world as the site for their protest action.
Posted inArt
Adrift in Shanghai’s Sin City
(Liu Dao) or island6, a Shanghai-based international collective of “multimedia artists, performers, writers, curators and tech-geeks” personify the aspirations of contemporary China by skirting verboten political flashpoints and keeping their content short, sweet, flirtatious, erotic and electronic.
Posted inArt
The Many Views of Christopher Columbus
October 12, observed yesterday as a holiday, is most commonly known as Columbus Day in the United States, but is also recognized as Dia de la Raza throughout Latin America, as well as Indigenous People’s Day. Fraught with controversy, the various iterations of this holiday reflect the range of perspectives on Christopher Columbus and his legacies. The Columbus Day of my youth celebrates the heroic “discoverer” of the Americas, playing up mythical stories of his genius on insisting the world was round, and often neglecting the icky bits about the ensuing genocide of the indigenous peoples of the Americas.
