Author: mahret

I will be teaching as a guest professor this winter semester at the Staedelschule art school in Frankfurt. In the seminar, we will focus on Appropriation Art, a practice that raises fundamental questions about originality, authorship and the connection between art and culture through the deliberate appropriation and reinterpretation of existing works. It originated in…

Eclectic Affinities brings the extensive work of the artist Hamid Zénati, who was born in Constantine (Algeria) in 1944 and died in Munich in 2022, into dialogue with various objects from the collection of the Museum Angewandte Kunst. With his all-over stencil technique, Zénati developed a distinct formal language and created compositions that were both playful…

TALKING OBJECTS ARCHIVE is a digital platform for decolonial knowledge production that will be launched in December 2024. The archive, developed together with African Digital Heritage, is interested in poly-perspectivity and plural knowledge systems breaking with European epistemologies and schools of thought. Starting with objects compiled from collections of European and African Museums the archive…

24.3.24 – 28.7.24 With: Elsa M’Bala, Fatou Kandé Senghor, Caroline Gueye, Nathalie Anguezomo Mba Bikoro, Ibrahima Thiam, Viyé Diba, Mansour Ciss Kanakassy, Uriel Orlow, baobab création, C& Center of Unfinished Business This group exhibition developed in Dakar offers a fresh perspective on the past and creates spaces for alternative forms of knowledge and knowledge transfer.…

Wie die Debatten der letzten Jahre deutlich gemacht haben, können Restitutionen nicht einfach als die Rückgabe geplünderter Objekte verstanden werden. Sie geschehen im gegenwärtigen politischen Kontext und entfalten sich im Verhältnis zu vielschichtigen historischen Zusammenhängen, die sie nie ungeschehen machen können. Diesem Geflecht von Machtverhältnissen, in dem der Anspruch auf kulturelles Erbe verhandelt wird, widmet…

Pleased to announce Dr. Mahret Kupka will be the mentor for the “CtD” Young Scholar Museum Fellowship program this February. She will lead a mentorship session with the fellows and facilitate the object biographies workshop. During this workshop, participating fellows are invited to reflect on a creative and imagined biography of objects selected from the…

Ré-imaginer le passé is more than just the two exhibitions in Dakar and Berlin—it is a long-term research journey, spanning several months. Guided by a participatory approach, a team of German and Senegalese curators brings together curious minds and visionary artists to explore our past and future. The project addresses the question of whether a reinterpretation…

October 20, 18.00 h @Vierte Welt, Kottbusser Tor. For the LA PALABRE series, from July-December 2023, we invite Berlin-based researchers*, artists*, and activists to discuss the issues we have been working on over the past two years as part of TALKING OBJECTS, an artistic research project on decolonizing knowledge. In a small La Palabre group…

Anlässlich der Ausstellung The Struggle of Memory (6.10.2023 – 11.3.2024) präsentiert das PalaisPopulaire die von Autor und Filmemacher Oliver Hardt kuratierte Filmreihe History is not the Past im Wolf Kino. Im Fokus stehen Filme von Künstler*innen und Filmemacher*innen aus Afrika und der afrikanischen Diaspora, die sich auf vielfältige Weise mit Fragen der Erinnerung, des Verlusts und der Restitution beschäftigen. Zu…

Im Wintersemester 2023/24 werde ich an der Berliner Universität der Künste das Fach Design Theorie als Vertretung der emeritierten Design Theorie Professur unterrichten. In einem Kurs zum Thema ANEIGNUNGEN werden sich die Studierenden der höheren Semester umfassend in Theorie und Praxis mit diesem umfangreichen Themenkomplex befassen. Es geht darum, den Begriff der Aneignung in der…