Mercedes Wagner - ExExoArtefakt Kunsthaus Essen

ExExoArtefakt

Kunsthaus Essen, 2019

Site-specific Installation, varying number of images, (C-Prints, glossy, 20 x 30 cm, 30 x 45 cm, 105 x 70 cm, wooden frames, with and without glass)

ExExoArtefakt (2018) questions representative functions of objects and photography by examining the everyday within a postcolonial context. The installation draws parallels between historic and contemporary processes of Colonialism and Globalization and aims towards a discussion of the terms artifact, culture and identity.

In museum, artifacts are dissociated from their original function to be experienced as objects and representatives of history. This kind of staging is transfered onto everyday eadibles bearing a historical relation to Latin America, wether because they originate there or have been introduced there within an euro-centred export economy imposed on the colonies.

The photographic medium detaches those objects from familiar meanings enabling their sculptural qualities. In the recontextualization with archaeological artifacts of pre-Colombian cultures they appear as unexpected representatives of colonial processes that shaped the economic system of our world until now. Drawing the line to the globalized present we futher see contemporary superfoods echoing historic appropriations of natural resources. We know, or should now, about precious metals of the past and rare earths of the present - but did we know that potatoes are neither german nor irish? And shouldn't we broaden our idea of culture, our concept of artifacts?

Thus, ExExoArtefakt creates a photographic space aiming towards resetting our perception of the everyday from a postcolonial point of view.