17/01/2024, 6:00 pm,

No Mask. Grada Kilomba. The Reading Group Machtkritische Kunstvermittlung as guest at Kunsthalle Münster with Prof. Dr. Gesa Krebber and Merle Radtke

, Kunsthalle Münster

The Reading Group Machtkritsche Kunstvermittlung will be a guest at the Kunsthalle Münster. On the initiative of art education specialist Prof. Dr. Gesa Krebber from the University of Fine Arts Münster, the group engages weekly with emancipatory, power-critical and transformative educational work. Together with Merle Radtke, the director of Kunsthalle Münster and curator of the exhibition Dominique White: When Disaster Strikes, questions about the visualization of marginalized groups and a sensitive learning culture in an artistic context will be raised and discussed directly on the works of the artist Dominique White.

This week's discussion will be based on the essay No Mask (published in: Maureen Maisha Eggers, Grada Kilomba, Peggy Piesche, Susan Arndt (eds.): Masken, Mythen und Subjekte. Kritische Weißseinsforschung in Deutschland, 4.th ed., Unrast Verlag, Münster 2005, 80–90) by Portuguese artist and author Grada Kilomba, who deals with trauma, racism and post-colonialism and, like White, rebels against the continued existence of a system based on the dehumanization and instability of black skin. Her work also depicts a rejection of authority. Kilomba talks about the mask of speechlessness, which was not only a real instrument of European colonial rule, but can also be seen as the embodiment of colonialism as a whole. The text emphasizes how the suppression of unwanted truths leads to them being systematically silenced. Speaking and listening must also be seen as a complex, interconnected project in the future—a practice of togetherness that should also be tested and aspired to in the Reading Group.

Everyone is cordially invited to take part in the open seminar on January 17, 2024. We kindly ask you to register at: kunsthalle@stadt-muenster.de. The text is written in English.