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31 May ’18

“Reprendre”? | Centre Pompidou, Paris

The question of the restitution of patrimonial objects is currently hotly debated in a world which is a return to the European colonial past and which questions the origin of extra-European objects torn from their original context, as well as their exposure patterns in the West. Director Susan Vogel , an expert on African art, recounts the fast-paced and tragically burlesque journey of a Fang statuette through the 20th century, since its delivery to the West. In his film The Visitor (2007), the Swiss artistUriel Orlow goes to meet Oba Erediauwa, then king of Benin, to question him on the need to repatriate or not the famous bronzes of Benin preserved in the British Museum. Finally, the Senegalese videographerFatou Kandé Senghor films a Casamance artist-ceramist, Seni Camara, whose ancestral know-how is threatened with extinction.These different films help to question the fate and transmission of confiscated objects, all too often dedicated to museification alone. 

Uriel Orlow’s film The Visitor is screened alongside Fatou Kande Senghor’s work Giving Birth, and Susan Vogel’s film, Fang: An Epic Journey, followed by an in-conversation with curator Alicia Knock


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24 Jan ’25 – 27 Apr ’25

Memória Colateral | Galeria Avenida da Índia, Lisboa

Uriel Orlow’s exhibition ‘Memória Colateral / Collateral Memory’ proposes an investigation into the concept of restitution, a theme he has explored for more than two decades. Beyond the simple return of objects or artefacts, restitution needs to be taken as a collective responsibility to reintegrate marginalised memories into history. This concept gains expression in interventions that recover forgotten knowledge and propose new ways of narrating historical events. Emphasis is placed on listening to the resonances of suppressed narratives in the present and fostering an ethic of memory and reparation.

With the support of República Portuguesa – Cultura I DGARTES – Direção-Geral das Artes, Galerias Municipais I EGEAC and Pro Helvetia I Swiss Art Council


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15 Dec ’24 – 18 Aug ’25

Naming Natures | Museum of Natural History, Neuchâtel (CH)

In 1838, Swiss naturalist Johann Jakob von Tschudi (1818—1889), commissioned by the Natural History Museum of Neuchâtel, sailed to Peru on a merchant ship filled with fabrics, champagne, and watches. During his journey, which lasted almost five years, he hunted and prepared over a thousand specimens, which he sent to Neuchâtel. This story is not unique: many European museums have collections acquired in a colonial context.

The Naming Natures project, supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation and the Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, takes a critical look at natural history collections from colonial settings, combining scientific, historical, and museographic approaches. Is it still possible to exhibit these collections? And if so, how can they be presented differently without exoticizing or glorifying the figure of the “great men of science”? What responsibility do museums have towards the communities concerned?

With works by Chonon Bensho, Denise Bertsch, Fabiano Kueva, Ximena Garrido-Lecca, Raúl Silva, Santiago Yahuarcani and many others.


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9 Nov ’24

EMAMI Art Experimental Film Festival | EMAMI Art, Kolkata

Screening of Imibizo Ka Mafavuke at EMAMI Art, Kolkata, in a session focused on films by Swiss artists curated by Damian Christinger and supported by the Swiss Embassy in India & Bhutan  at EMAMI Art Experimental FIlm Festival 2024. Screening along side works by Nicole Bachmann, Elodie Pong, Ursula Biemann and Monica Ursina Jäger.

Emami Art Experimental Film Festival (EAEFF) is a platform dedicated to curating and building discourses around alternative and experimental films, videos, and artists’ moving image practices. 


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4 Oct ’24 – 5 Jan ’25

Come Sing Along! On Raising Our Voices | Lentos Kunstmuseum, Linz

As part of the Anton Bruckner Year 2024, the exhibition is dedicated to the aspect of communal singing from the perspective of contemporary art. The collection brings together around 20 national and international fi gures for whom singing is a fundamental point of reference within their artistic practice. The works on display explore singing in its various levels of meaning: be it as an expression of personal identity, as an opportunity for intercultural exchange, as a means of (political) protest, or as a community-building practice within contemporary societies.

With works by Sammy Baloji, Chto Delat, Michèle Pearson Clarke, Clément Cogitore, Ines Doujak, Noam Enbar, Nikolaus Gansterer, Mathilde ter Heijne, Dejan Kaludjerović and many others.


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3 Oct ’24

Artist Conversation with Uriel Orlow, Francesca Brusa and Louisa Behr | Migros Museum, Zurich

On the occasion of the exhibition ‘Knowledge Is a Garden’, the museum is hosting an artist talk between the artist Uriel Orlow, Francesca Brusa (from the researcher ZHdK) and Louisa Behr (curatorial assistant).

Uriel Orlow curated the exhibition together with Nadia Schneider Willen, Co-Director Museum – Collection, and placed his own works in dialogue with works from the museum’s collection and external loans. His thematic starting point is his interest in the suppression of knowledge, the unlawful appropriation of knowledge and, ultimately, new forms of knowledge production and diversity. During the talk, Uriel Orlow will provide a deeper insight into both his own artistic practice and the selection process of the collection works and loans. The artist’s talk will focus on the impossibility of neutral knowledge production and reflect on the curatorial process, which is inevitably selective and thus makes a choice as to what knowledge is conveyed by the artworks.


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28 Sep ’24 – 19 Jan ’25

KNOWLEDGE IS A GARDEN | Migros Museum, Zurich

The exhibition Knowledge Is a Garden presents Uriel Orlow’s elaborate three-part video installation Theatrum Botanicum Trilogy (2016-2018) for the first time since it became part of the Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst collection. In addition, the artist was invited to place his works based on his own artistic interests in dialogue with works from the collection. His focus is mainly on artistic explorations of «wilful non-knowledge» (agnotology). What knowledge is permitted in the course of global power relations, what is suppressed or hidden? What knowledge is unlawfully acquired? How is knowledge lost? What is a knowledge economy?

With works by Maria Eichhorn, Susan Hiller, General Idea, and others.


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