No. 116/2024
31 HUMBOLDT KOSMOS 116/2024 recognise that immigrants who learn their host country’s language can both help to interpret collections and make visits easier for other migrants.” Moreover, her research has revealed that in spite of all the efforts at structural level, there is still a fundamental need for action. Artists, who are People of Colour, for example, are seldom an integral part of permanent exhibitions but tend to feature at the periphery of temporary exhibitions. “European museums are colonial institutions, and their work is inculcated with colonial practices.” One way of starting to change this, Labadi believes, would be “to employ migrants and People of Colour with decision-making power who really want to change the core of museum practice.” DECOLONISED THINKING It is not only in museums, however, that colonial structures persist. Labadi says, “We see thesemechanisms everywhere. In Francophone Africa, for example, where children use schoolbooks produced in France from which they learn very little about their own history.” Or at her daughter’s school: “The only People of Colour who work there are cleaners and canteen staff, not teachers,” says Labadi. In her most recent project, she is studying colonial statues in post-colonial Africa and exploring the question as to whether history is destroyed when they are removed from the public domain. “If we accept that heritage is dynamic, we can take down statues to make way for a heritage that is more in tune with local history,” is Labadi’s position. At the moment, she is also interested in artistic approaches that could replace statues in the public domain and make people think – like the installation PeopL by the Belgian-Rwandan artist Laura Nsengiyumva: an ice replica of the equestrian statue of King Leopold II, who was responsible for the colonisation of the Congo Free State and the subsequent exploitation of its resources. Over the course of a long evening, during the artistic event “Nuit Blanche”, the artist melted the statue of the Belgian colonial ruler in front of an audience in the covered courtyard of a Brussels primary school. Labadi believes “it was a very fitting way of showing what a complex and protracted process it is to alter colonial structures and bring about change.” Photos: private MUSEUMS, IMMIGRANTS, AND SOCIAL JUSTICE (2018 ROUTLEDGE) Using comprehensive case studies of leading museums in France, Denmark and the UK, Labadi puts forward the following interdisciplinary thesis: through their own programmes outside of exhibition spaces, museums can make a decisive contribution to developing, amongst other things, migrants’ language and professional skills. COLONIAL STATUES IN POST-COLONIAL AFRICA Labadi is currently investigating how colonial statues were used and interpreted in African countries after independence. She sheds light on the complex dynamics of power, memory and identity and aims to stimulate a broadly-based discussion about monuments in postcolonial societies. RETHINKING HERITAGE FOR SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT (2022 UCL PRESS) Whether and how cultural heritage can contribute to sustainable development is the field explored in this project by Sophia Labadi. Based on an historical analysis of international approaches to “culture” and a critical appraisal of heritage for development projects in Ethiopia, Mozambique, Namibia and Senegal, she is drawing up recommendations for a new direction in cultural practice. FIELDWORK FINDINGS
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