Page 28 - Situated_Making_Catalogue

Artist Statement

The Museum Under Erasure project emerged outdated museum practices, and the legacies of critique museum practices, and issues to from still images taken while the ice melts and the plants
out of critical scholarly engagement with theories of the museums in Africa, that continues to call itself do with museums in Africa. This portable grow. My exploration of failure, of trying and trying again,
museum in Africa, institutional practices, notions of the a ‘museum’ will fail in its institutional critique. MUSEUM takes form of a collection of used is embodied in the repetitive act of casting from molds,
avant-garde, the role of audience in meaning making, However, for critique through parody or satire suitcases, each of which is thought of as a letting the casts melt, and then starting the process
participatory and performative art practices, art as to be successful, audiences must recognize ‘room’ of the museum. I am using suitcases again. The use of magnifying glasses throughout the
institutional critique, and impermanent artworks. The what is being critiqued. This presented me for the obvious connotations of baggage and installation denotes the forms of scrutiny that objects
project emerged from a critical self-reflection of my with an interesting challenge: how do I critique travelling, journeying, and so that the MUSEUM are subjected to in museums. I am interested in how,
Portable Hawkers Museum project (2002- 2021). historical conceptions of the museum, without is portable. like museums, the magnifying glasses both reveal and
In a book chapter titled ‘Confronting the Museum: reproducing the museum? Featured on the Situated Making obscure vision. I hope that through these explorations
Artists’ Interventions as Critique’1, I realised that, like I arrived at a new approach, the creation exhibition is an exhibition within an exhibition. In this Museum might fail better than the Portable Hawkers
the neo avant-garde artists who preceded me, my of an anti-museum, titled Museum, in which the MUSEUM’s first exhibition, titled ‘Embrace Museum.
project failed to adequately critique the institutions the word 'museum' is purposely written under Failure’, that consists of a series of artworks
of art from within. Despite that I created the Portable erasure. To write ‘under erasure’ is a philosophic made with discarded trophies, purchased from sources consulted
Hawkers Museum in order to critique the exclusiveness, writing device proposed by Heidegger and thrift shops; once a symbol of achievement, Kearney, A. (2021b) ‘Confronting the Museum: Artists’ Interventions as
and problematic histories of cultural history museums expanded upon by Derrida. In her preface to now relegated to trash. Through combining Critique’ in Museum Futures, edited by Leonhard Emmerling, L. Gupta, L.
in Africa through a combination of parodying certain Derrida’s, which she translated into English, these found objects in different ways, I explore Proença and M. Biwa. Austria: Turia and Kant, pages 472- 487.
museum practices (the collection, the taxonomy, Spivak (1976, xiv) 2 explains that to write under the nature of achievement, what is valued and Spivak, G. C. (1976) Translators Preface. In Derrida, J. Of Grammatology.
the acquisition and loaning policies) while inverting erasure is celebrated, as well as the opposite- notions Trans. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University
other aspects of museum practices (the portability, to write a word, cross it out, and then print of failure, and the importance of failure as a Press, pp. xiii-xvi.
the temporality, the collection of inexpensive mass both word and deletion. (Since the word is necessary step for learning and growth. The
produced goods), I claimed my project to be a museum. inaccurate, it is crossed out. Since it is connection between failure and growth is to
Even though engagements such as the Portable necessary, it remains legible). explore more literally perhaps in the ‘room’ ‘Fail
Hawkers Museum enable dialogue and critique, the very Better’ in which I water plants with academic
idea of a museum remains entangled with the colonial MUSEUM is a portable ‘museum under erasure’, graduation trophies made of ice. I am developing The Museum Under Erasure.
Detail.
project. Implied is that any project that aims to critique through which I will continue to explore and this work into a time-lapse video work, made January – September 2022.

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