Isaac Julien’s installation Once Again... (Statues Never Die) (2022) serves as a starting point for a critical reflection on the complex entanglements of modern aesthetics and colonial violence. Modern attitudes towards African culture were often shaped by a blend of idealisation and racism. This session will focus on rethinking controversial practices such as collecting and cultural appropriation, as well as categories and terms such as primitive or exotic, against the traditionally silenced backdrop of colonialism and slavery. To this end, the histories of statues looted from Africa, largely aestheticised and exhibited alongside Western paintings, will be at the centre of the discussion. Inspired by Julien’s proposal of ‘poetic restitution’, memories of these statues will be awakened and a new future will be imagined for them.

Sol Izquierdo de la Viña is a post-doctoral researcher at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. She studied art history in Madrid and Berlin, specialising in transcultural dynamics. Her research focuses on the impact of the circulation of images and cultural assets from non-Western regions on modern art. In her dissertation, she revisited German Expressionism from a post-colonial perspective, focusing on Ernst Ludwig Kirchner’s reception of Indian art and culture. She was awarded the Funcas Foundation Prize for the best dissertation in the Humanities category. In addition, she was co-curator of the Whose Expression? The Brücke Artists and Colonialism exhibition at the Brücke Museum in Berlin and a curatorial assistant at SAVVY Contemporary Berlin. She is currently working on a research project called ‘Traveling Identity: Orientalist Imaginaries of Lene Schneider-Kainer through her Journeys during the Weimar Republic and in Exile’.