Collective exhibition, until September 16^th 2012.

The international network of Ethnography Museums and World Cultures of RIME launched the exhibition Fetish Modernity in six European museums from 2011 to 2014. After having been presented in Brussels and Madrid, the exhibition settles in Prague.

This fetish modernity that we place at the heart of all action is actually at the heart of the curatorial thinking of Anne-Marie Bouttiaux and Anna Seiderer, the curators, put into question the notion of Western modernity and “ponder on the feeling of superiority that the Western world shows to the rest of the world”. To denounce the stereotypes and to destroy them, the exhibition presents “hybrid objects” –coming from cultural mixings and from the richness of syncretism. To fight against the fixed ideas establishing the Western supremacy in the field of modernity, Fetish Modernity gathers artists from different horizons to bring evidence that it is not the case. According to the curators, modernity is a “dynamic process that has been taking place everywhere and at any time” – a concept that is far from being uniform and that is multiple and subjective.

For instance, we can see the photograph of a Papua of Papua New Guinea with a CD as nose ornament or a coffin with a cellphone painted on it…

Jean-François Boclé (Martinique) exhibits there Si ton musée est mort, essaie le mien (« if your museum is dead, try mine »).

A collection of objects and artifacts reminiscent of the colonial time (comic books, chocolate, games…) and linked to the colonial imaginary, or a collection of objects on President Obama are placed in an old museum glass-window. He “parodies the ethnographic museums” and their representations of Africa.

The exhibition will after travel to the Museum für Völkerkunde in Vienna, Austria, to the Rijksmuseum voor volkenkunde National in Leiden, in the Netherlands and to the National Museums of World Culture of Stockholm, in Sweden.

Participating artists : Sammy Baloji, Marie Baronnet, Jean-François Boclé (Martinique), Pierre Buch, Marina Cox, Eric Lafforgue, Pitcho and Lisl Ponger.

National Museum, Náprstek Museum of Asian, African and American Cultures, Betlémské náměstí 1, Praga, Czech Republic. 

Exhibition on view from Tuesday to Sunday, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., except on Wednesday from 9 a.m., from June 19^th to September 16^th 2012.

http://www.nm.cz/Naprstkovo-muzeum/Exhibitions-NpM/Fetish-Modernity.html?xSET=lang&xLANG=2

Headline picture’s credits : Exhibition’s poster © RIME