“The exhibition has not been stopped, but can only be visited under the supervision of the artist himself or a guide,” says general director Bart Ouvry of the AfricaMuseum. “As an activist, Teddy Mazina has dug up colonial images from our own archive and projected comments on them. These are quite raw images, and we didn’t want to wait for complaints to come. We did this on our own initiative, because this is not something that you can show unfiltered. Our policy is that we want to show everything, but always with context.” And so the meter-sized white doors on floor -2 of the museum remain closed.
With a video project linked to the exhibition, Mazina confronted the visitor, as far as he or she is able, with the way in which Europeans depicted Africans during the colonial period. With the emphasis on “absolute differences, radical otherness and as incomplete beings, of bodies without subjects”.
In a previous photo exhibition, Human Zoo, Mazina showed images of recreated African villages during world exhibitions at the end of the 19th and beginning of the last century, here and there in Europe. The current AfricaMuseum owes its origins to a temporary exhibition that opened its doors in 1897 as a colonial part of the world exhibition in Brussels. The driving force then was King Leopold II.
In 2018, the AfricaMuseum reopened its doors after a thorough renovation and renewal, with a more contemporary look at the colonial past. Yet criticism still arose regularly. For example, the innovation did not go far enough, according to a panel of experts from the UN, who visited the museum in 2019.
The exhibition My name is No-Body was intended as one of the projects with which the museum wanted to highlight its 125th anniversary. According to its own poster, the exhibition will run until November 11, but behind closed doors. Next to the closed door is a warning on the wall: “The museum is aware that the images and words used in this exhibition may be shocking or offensive. Its choice is part of the working method of artist Teddy Mazina and of his project on deconstruction of stereotypes contained in the photo library’s discourse on colonial times. These images and words do not in any way reflect the current vision of the AfricaMuseum.”
The AfricaMuseum now has temporary exhibition openings, including on Sunday, October 29 and Sunday, November 12. Teddy Mazina will then personally guide, according to Ouvry.
