Colonial depictions

The infamous quote 'History is written by the victors' doesn't only pertain to the history of war: it also denotes how oppressors shape the narrative around the people they oppress.

For centuries, European curators and archivists have described and archived colonial artefacts, often without a clear idea of the context of these objects that didn't belong to the culture or lived experience of those describing them. This has left European cultural heritage collections filled with objects and descriptions that contain harmful, minimising, exoticising, and/or racist language and imagery.

People are increasingly being exposed to these harmful depictions and descriptions in cultural heritage institutions due to mass digitisation without sufficient critical reflection and updating of metadata.

Cultural heritage institutions are increasingly trying to come to terms with this contentious past. One way to do so is by repatriating objects or providing important historical context to colonial depictions. Another way is by giving minoritised communities better access to the collections, allowing them to explore, reinterpret, and reclaim their own histories.

The DE-BIAS project is one initiative working towards a postcolonial cultural heritage sphere. It does so, in part, by inviting minoritised groups and their allies to redescribe, critique, give feedback on and co-manage cultural heritage collections, in the hope of coming to a more respectful and less imbalanced view of this heritage.

This blog gathers testimonies and pieces of feedback written by members of Intellectuele Congolese kring, an organisation striving to represent the interests of the Congolese community in Belgium. They were invited to critique and consider colonial depictions of Congolese peoples and history, in collaboration with KU Leuven and KADOC. Below are some of their contributions.

Othi

Othi is a writer and poet who writes in a local Congolese language.

This photo is called 'A Congolese beauty' but there is nothing beautiful about this photo. We see how this photo sexually objectifies the black woman, who must show nudity to be beautiful. The woman doesn't look happy either, she looks sad, very sad and powerless. If it was a white woman, this photo wouldn't be like this. We probably would be seeing a fully dressed woman, smiling and looking at the camera.

I would call this photo 'Congolese sadness' instead of 'beauty'.

This is also a very demeaning image. It implies that the black man isn't manly enough to measure up to the white agent, as if his shortness is symbolic of his life. The black man is not dressed, the white officer is. Here we see again the power of the white man, his superiority and the feeling that he is better, while that is not the truth.

Pauline

Pauline is in charge of communication at the Africamuseum in Tervuren

This image gives me mixed feelings. On the one hand, I appreciate the beauty and cultural richness that the women in the photo radiate. Their proud posture and refined clothing reflect a legacy of tradition and aesthetics deeply entrenched in Congolese society.

On the other hand, I realise this image was probably shown with different intentions than just to celebrate beauty. The photo was probably taken during the Universal Exhibition of Antwerp in 1894. In the context of that time, these women seem to be presented from a colonial, primitivist perspective, in which their cultural values and human dignity were undermined.

I feel that the intention behind this display was to dehumanise the Congolese and portray them as savages, without any depth or respect for the complexity of their society. There is a lack of context about the deep cultural richness and advanced social structures these women represent. Nevertheless, the image remains intriguing and contains a wealth of information about the rich civilisation and culture, often underappreciated, that these Congolese women embody.

Yves

Yves has co-founded an organisation aiming at providing children from Eastern Congo with educational opportunities.

This is a very beautiful picture to me. I see it shows three men from Ituri. I assume these are important figures. I would love to know their names. Maybe this is an old royal family? Who knows? They're posing here, but they're not laughing.

I don't know if they had given permission to have their picture taken, or what the goal of taking this photograph was. These questions arise when I look at this picture.

Decolonising collections

The contribution of the members of Intellectuele Congolese Kring to the discussion of these objects is crucial to show how the remnants of the colonial era reverberate in cultural heritage collections to this day. The photographs highlighted in this blog show the coloniser's gaze, framing, and thoughts. By listening to the contributions in this blog, we add another side to the story, another voice to the narrative.

Not just the objects themselves, but also the way they are described in the metadata can be potentially harmful. In the blog Colonial Descriptions, we highlight how members of Congolese Kring reflect on the words and descriptions used in colonial Congolese cultural heritage metadata.

The DE-BIAS project aims to highlight underrepresented voices as a starting point to recontextualise contentious cultural heritage collections. Through co-creation events, crowdsourcing initiatives, the creation of a vocabulary and knowledge graph of contentious terms, and the creation of an online tool to detect biased terms in cultural heritage metadata, DE-BIAS aims to help the cultural heritage sector into the postcolonial era.