What Happens After Repatriation?
“Tide of Returns” investigates the histories and futures of handmade dolls repatriated to an Indigenous Australian community.
VENICE — In November 2018, scholars and historians Felwine Sarr and Bénédicte Savoy released The Restitution of African Cultural Heritage: Toward a New Relational Ethics, a landmark report that called for the return of African artworks and artifacts removed during the colonial era. More than a question of legal ownership, the authors argued that restitution could repair historical injustice, restore cultural memory, and establish a new relationship between Europe and Africa based on reciprocity rather than colonial domination.
The report gave new momentum to demands for restitution, while repatriation efforts more broadly have involved not only celebrated treasures such as the Benin Bronzes but also more modest objects.
In 2023, the Manchester Museum returned 174 objects to the Anindilyakwa people of Groote Eylandt, a community of Indigenous Australian islanders, in an important example of cultural repatriation. These objects, called Dadikwakwa-kwa, are small dolls made from shells, fibers, textiles, beads, and found materials. They were traditionally used to teach children about kinship, clan relationships, fertility, and connections to the land. Many have individual names and are understood as living presences that preserve stories and ancestral knowledge. In celebration of their return, the Repatriates Collective — a group of artists and researchers from Australia, Africa, Latin America, and Europe that investigates the histories and futures of returned objects — conceived of the project Tide of Returns, on view now at TBA21's Ocean Space in Venice.
Curated by Khadija von Zinnenburg Carroll, Tide of Returns occupies the monumental deconsecrated Church of San Lorenzo and unfolds across film, archival material, sculpture, and sound to examine the movement of cultural objects between Europe, Africa, and Australia.
