The Butterfly Effect # 2: Rafiki

Welcome to Nordnorsk Kunstmuseum's second event in the series “The Butterfly Effect. Can small shifts in museum practice generate seismic change across our societies?” We have invited The artist, Rafiki to give a talk titled "Sheltering OURstories: Between colonial amnesia and Ancestral memory restitution in the museum"

• Date: 8 December, 2023 at 15:00-16:00
• Location: Zoom. Launch Meeting - Zoom
• The event will be held in English and the presentation will be recorded.

 

 

"In the postmodern era, it has become increasingly normal to factor in institutional critique, decoloniality, inclusion and more recently, care, as a progressive philosophy of change in the public museum. There is no question that decolonization, inclusion and diversity are among the major buzzwords and concepts that benefit the museum institution in terms of relevance in a society that is increasingly multi-ethnic. However, these concepts are still relatively new and fragile in a historical perspective. The immense work that is needed to free the museum from the grip of intellectual imperialism is more important now than ever. I will speak on it from my position as someone who is local to the central region of the African continent and of to the northern European region of Scandinavia."

 

Rafiki (b. 1989) is based in Oslo, Norway. Rather than producing finished products as an end result, Rafiki treats art making as a practice of remembrance, healing and cultural analysis.

Her images often employ artistic strategies that avoid a western anthropological gaze. Incorporporating symbolism, fables, and tools of visual storytelling and oral history, she invokes themes of forced migration and war ghosts, racialized perceptions of Blackness and femininity, and fraught colonial traditions of spatial power and temporal erasure. As a child of the Congolese diaspora with connections in various countries on the African continent and Europe, she taps into pre-colonial forms of global interconnectedness and knowledge transfer.
 

The Butterfly Effect is an 18-month long programme series organised by Nordnorsk Kunstmuseum. The series consists of conversations, lectures, performances, shared meals, walks, and workshops, both digital and physical, at NNKM's sites and in collaboration with partners.

The series was launche on 28 October, 2023 with a lecture by New York-based curator Laura Raicovich (author of Culture Strike: Art and Museums in an Age of Protest, 2022). A video recording of Laura Raicovich's lecture is available soon.

Future events in the series:
2 February 2024:
Ánde Somby, at Nordnorsk Kunstmuseum in Tromsø

19 March 2024:
Candice Hopkins, at Nordnorsk Kunstmuseum in Tromsø

Later in 2024 there will be events with Ama Josephine Budge, Léuli Eshrāghi, Anawana Haloba, Stefanie Hessler, Melanie Keen, Kimberley Moulton, Manuela Moscoso and others to be announced.
Follow our channels for more information.

The Butterfly Effect general description text in English.