Muzungu  (THE WHITE HERO COMPLEX)

6 ROOMS

During the making of the project “Mach Dir ein Bild (“Make yourself a picture"), I have looked for a new approach to a different form of photographic and interdisciplinary action which rejects both dominating modern image parameters and the stereotypical Western view on Africa. Due to my focus on sociocultural backgrounds, everyday habits and their beliefs, my perspective and attitude regarding this great continent has changed. From weddings to births and funerals: I was able to partake in everyday life and moreover, I have learned how the politics in remote villages in Burkina Faso work. I have been entrusted with the reports of the genocide in Rwanda in 1994 and former child soldiers in the DR Congo shared their experiences with me.

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UNICEF schminkt weiße Kinder schwarz.

                 Afrikanische Kinder gehen nicht in 

                 die Schule.

Ich schminke meinen Hintern schwarz. Ich kann

Twerken.

                Auch westliche Volunteers in Afrika

                können jetzt Twerken.

Und schwarze Frauen haben einen riesigen

Hintern.

                Mein Hintern ist auch groß.

Der Papst ist Vater vieler Kinder.

               Das Spielzeug im Kongo ist in den

               UN Farben bemalt.

Ich höre die Kinder aus Burkina Faso ihren

Namen sagen:

                              Je m‘appelle Ruamba, Marien 

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ROOM 4

Angelina Jolie ist schön. Und schön.

Brad Pitt auch.

               Ich will zu Markus Lanz in die

              Talkshow. Reden.

Heute würde ich gern als Held zu Bett gehen.

Für eine Nacht.

              Wie geht das? Kann ich jetzt noch

einen Oscar gewinnen?

Wer baut mit der Welthungerhilfe eine

Wasserauffanganlage in Kenia?

              Der Gewinner bekommt 100 $.

              In bar. Von mir. Gespendet.

Auch wenn es dort seit drei Jahren nicht

geregnet hat.

              Ist ja für was Gutes.

Ich kaufe mir einen bunten

Regenschirm.

"... Africa's drama is that the African has not yet entered history. The African farmer knows only the eternal restoration of time in the rhythm of the endless repetition of the same gestures and the same words. In this state of mind, where everything starts from the beginning, there is neither room for the adventure of humanity nor the idea of progress. In this universe, where nature regulates everything, man escapes the torment of history that keeps modern man captive, and he remains motionless in an unchanging order. He never reaches towards the future. He never comes up with the idea to step out of the repetition to invent his own fate. 

This is the problem of Africa ... "

Presidentspeech / Nicolas Sarkozy /  01.08.2007 in Dakar

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ROOM 6

On this photo you can see a Congolese girl,

at the age of about 7 years old.

The picture is taken from the foot of the girl.

The girl is undressed and her legs are splayed.

Her upper body is cut open from the top to the bottom.

Her intestines are removed. The girl has closed eyes, and her right arm lies over her own upper body.

She lies on a typical African fabric material.

The fabric is burgundy and has circular purple-yellow patterns.

At the top of the picture above the girl‘s head the meadow can be seen.

This Photo was sent to my Whatsappaccount on the 20.05.2016 

from my friend „Y“ living in the DR Congo

Massacre Beni, DR Congo 2016/17 

The auditive image descriptions refer to photographs I received from friends from the Democratic Republic of the Congo via Whats-App and the Facebook messenger on my mobile phone. In Beni, a city in eastern Congo, a new rebel group has been spreading atrocities since the beginning of 2016. According to Joseph Kabila, the President of the Democratic Republic of Congo, it is an Islamic terrorist group. Local witnesses report that the combatants wore partly Ugandan, Rwandan and Congolese military clothes. According to different media reports, the residents assume that the new rebel group consists of mercenary soldiers, who are supposed to cause unrest on behalf of the government in order to destabilize the country and make new elections more difficult. The pictures show that the atrocities are staged in a way to spread great fear and fright. Moreover, the acts resemble the acts of Islamic terrorist organizations.

CONCEPT

Muzungu I (THE WHITE HERO COMPLEX)

Muzungu I (THE WHITE HERO COMPLEX)

During the making of the project “Mach Dir ein Bild (“Make yourself a picture"), I have looked for a new approach to a different form of photographic and interdisciplinary action which rejects both dominating modern image parameters and the stereotypical Western view on Africa. Due to my focus on sociocultural backgrounds, everyday habits and their beliefs, my perspective and attitude regarding this great continent has changed. From weddings to births and funerals: I was able to partake in everyday life and moreover, I have learned how the politics in remote villages in Burkina Faso work. I have been entrusted with the reports of the genocide in Rwanda in 1994 and former child soldiers in the DR Congo shared their experiences with me.

About MUZUNGU I (THE WHITE HERO COMPLEX)

In this artistic work, I deal with what I call the "White Hero Complex." I am concerned both with the projections on Western societies of the African continent and with those of African societies on the West and especially on Europe. 

In several open minded research and work trips to Burkina Faso, Rwanda and the DR Congo, various artistic collaborations with local artists and institutions were initiated. Among them the multi-year long project “Mach dir ein Bild” ("Make yourself a picture") with children and young people of three countries. Under the aegis of the newly founded, collaborative “Kompanie der Kreativen" (“Company of the creative"), further artistic works, artefacts and processes were realized, in which the participants share their life and attitudes from an inner view. These artistic encounters had led to a joint dialogue beyond national borders with diverse perspectives on the topic. 

Being on-site, interacting with people, local institutions and authorities, my personal archive was filled with images, films, quotations, impressions and experiences. An ambivalent, mixed, and sometimes unsightly picture of the situation in the respective country was revealed.

The room installation of “Muzungu (The White Hero Complex)” shows fragments from this heterogeneous archive. In the exhibition these elements are contextualized by supplementing them with self-produced material that revolves around the relationship between the West and Africa, but above all the role of the white woman in this network. As a result, I document experiences which show role attributions shifting and dissolving. On the other hand, I try to capture the constant change of my own point of view and the continuing reference to myself as a participant in this regime of attributions.

My approach is fundamentally different from African projects which draw a picture of a new, unknown and therefore exotic perspective on the continent from the outside. I follow a questioning and fragmentary approach in order not to answer questions hastily and not to make experiences always accessible as already concluded. I open up an ambiguous space, which leaves phenomena of power, inequality and the observed difficulties and conflicts. Therefore, exhibition spaces have been created in which these different fragments are mounted together, mutually rubbing and repelling and merging to an unforeseen field of tension. The conflicts within this artistic work clearly show us that Africa is not a phantom. That Africa is more than the Western world thinks about it. Actually, Africa has produced its own clichés and conceptions of the others, while at the same time quasi-institutionalized injustice, inequality and exploitation in the service of Western interests continues. But that Africa is, above all, quite different from what I had thought, and it is only understandable from a microscope perspective and through a common experience.