Yuki Kihara, Odalisque (After Boucher), 2017, from the series ‘Coconuts that grew from concrete 24 Jun 2017
14:00 - 17:00
Symposium: Declassified - How to Un/Engender the Ethnographic Object?
On Saturday June 24, Framer Framed collaborates with Research Centre for Material Culture to organise the symposium Declassified: How to Un/Engender the Ethnographic Object?
The symposium will take place at the Tropenmuseum in Amsterdam.
The symposium Declassified: How to Un/Engender the Ethnographic Object? traces the (historical) construction of gender and sexuality within the ethnographic collecting practices of museums. In the earliest ethnographic collection practices, social structure and gender were considered fixed and given; defined (and biased) by a normative European (most often male) gaze. Since the onset of ethnographic museums, these collecting methodologies have classified objects from across the world. In doing so, they have not only contributed to a blueprint of how gender and sexuality are perceived and constructed within the institution, but also how they are viewed by visitors and reproduced within texts and exhibitions.
These restrictive binary notions of sexuality and gender have in many ways elided the fact that across the globe various cultural groups have recognized and integrated their own long-established traditions for other constructions of gender. Some of these groups are well represented within ethnographic collection, but due to gaps, silences, misreadings and fictions these objects are often wrongly interpreted. How can we un/engender these ethnographic objects? What does it mean for a museum to side-step its own body of knowledge and critically rethink its own understanding of how gender and sexuality are attached to its objects?
Declassified: How to Un/Engender the Ethnographic Object?, is an invitation to trace, question and discuss the normative notions of sexual, gendered and political identities within ethnographic museums and institutions. Declassified: How to Un/Engender the Ethnographic Object? is part of the Un/Engendered series of lectures and events where we delve into the multiple meanings and roles of gender in our collections. In this series we invite scholars, activists and artists question, to rethink and rewrite notions of gender, body politics and sexuality, and its relation to patriarchy in contemporary societies.
Framer Framed is a partner in developing this program. Artist Yuki Kihara, guest speaker in the symposium, previously participated in Framer Framed’s exhibition Embodied Spaces (2015).
SPEAKERS
Introduction by:
Wayne Modest (head Research Center for Material Culture)
Speakers:
Dr. Wonu Veys (curator National Museum of World Cultures)
Yuki Kihara (artist)
Maria Guggenbichler (artist)
Pim Westerkamp (curator National Museum of World)
Museologie / Feminisme / Queer /
Netwerk
Wayne Modest
Directeur van het Museum van Wereldculturen
Fanny Wonu Veys
Curator Oceania
Maria Guggenbichler
Kunstenaar
Amal Alhaag
Curator
Shigeyuki Kihara
Kunstenaar
