Museum Rietberg’s A Kind of Paradise: Colonial-Era Photography in Contemporary Art is Balm for the Scars of European Conquest
“A Kind of Paradise: Colonial-Era Photography in Contemporary Art,” a group exhibition at Museum Rietberg in Zurich, brings together 20 artists to examine how colonial-era photography shaped memory and reinforced European conquest narratives. Drawing on ideas like Susan Sontag’s 1977 book “On Photography,” the show argues that images can both document and erase, and it highlights artists who rework archival photographs to recover suppressed histories. Brazilian artist Rosana Paulino is among the participants, and the exhibition is organized into four thematic sections including “Shapeshifters” and “Confrontation,” featuring artists such as Dinh Q. Lê, Cédric Kouamé, Wendy Red Star, Omar Victor Diop, Yuki Kihara, Frida Orupabo, and Dimakatso Mathopa.
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This story was covered in Museums Under Fire, Identities in Flux