Displaced and looted burial vessels have been reclaimed, stolen for a second time as flawed copies. Once passing through the landscapes of extraction, one finds them floating above whispering sounds. Brought together – perhaps against their will – to share stories of forced exhumations.
The objects are 3D-scanned copies taken from the British Museum, and
no permission has been asked or granted. This space is conceived as a site of transition, as the copies embark on a journey of reburial. Before returning them to the underground, we might imagine landscapes of potential reparation while acknowledging their impossibility.
To enter the building, one must stand in a line marked by temporary metal fences. The queue ends at a white tent, where several security guards await. The security procedure does not take long. I open my bag and allow them to look inside with the help of a torch. Beyond the tent, a monumental 19th-century ‘Greek Revival-style’ building awaits. Inside, around 80,000 objects are kept for public display – from the 8 million objects constituting the collection. The institution's website states that small and big collections were gathered by officials, diplomats, missionaries and travellers during the time of the empire.
I enter the inner courtyard – originally conceived as a garden, now a vast space covered by a gigantic modern construct of glass and steel as its roof. In the middle stands a circular white edifice with two staircases surrounding it in symmetry. The courtyard as a whole is composed of a light beige marble floor, a white-furnished café and bookshop, air-conditioned atmosphere and abundant light – all elements evoking a sanitised space. Two 12-meter-high wooden carved poles placed on white pedestals rise toward the glass sky. The courtyard makes me feel like an ant trapped in a giant light box amid the crowds of visitors. A slight dizziness and feeling of disorientation takes over – the museum's ‘cleanness’ becomes overwhelming. I recall a vague reference to the term ‘non-place’1: a place defined by anonymity and non-belonging. Can museums be ‘non-places’ for objects?
Taking a seat at the museum café, I grab my phone and start to browse the institution’s website. The courtyard’s description as ‘a place for all’ makes me chuckle. I came here in search of Andean ceramic vessels, possibly extracted from the landscapes I grew up in. That part of the collection is closed to the public today. I decide to roam around, and the first thing I encounter is a sign reading ‘Africa’ with an arrow pointing down. I walk down the stairs to the underground floor. In the ceramic room, one of the central pieces is a metal structure displaying several vessels in a vertical spiral. One vessel that captures my attention is made of terracotta. It has an oval body with a central extended neck surrounded by four smaller orifices. Its surface is decorated with abstract relief patterns, such as spirals and lines.
Joining the common behaviour of museum visitors, I take out my phone to capture the object by making a 3D scan. Walking slowly, I circle it four times, holding my phone at different angles. My scan focuses on the vessel, but the surrounding objects and delimitation cords allow a partial capture. The final result makes the vessel appear suspended in a scattered structure. The fragmented, dissolving 3D image of this ancient object reminds me of a ghost.
As I continue my disoriented search through the museum rooms, I encounter more ceramic vessels. Reading their short descriptions and information tags, I notice that most of them once rested underground, buried alongside others in graves. These were burial objects: carriers of sacred goods meant to accompany the dead on their journey to the afterlife – or were themselves the very embodiment of ancestors.
Entering another room I find myself trapped between bigger crowds. It is the Egyptian ‘life and death’ room, where mummified human remains are kept on display, trapped in glass cases and spotlights. A body on display looks alive to me and without words, they say: ‘I don’t belong here’. My knees start to feel soft, and another form of bodily discomfort takes over. A magnetic force pulls the joints of my body towards the ground. Feelings of sadness and rage take hold of me as well. How far can the exhibitionary impetus of these institutions go?
I manage to make my way to the next room, where I encounter exhibits of burial vessels accompanied by documentation of the archaeological excavations of ‘The Tomb of King Den’ in Egypt. While looking at the photographs, a vivid memory of an open-pit mine I once visited comes to mind. The image evokes something beyond the ‘curatorial intention’: it reveals geometric excavation trenches, layers of soil exposed, tools in use – the traces of an act of plunder. Mineral bodies are turned to ‘resources’, objects – even human remains – are commodified as artifacts for display.
1 Marc Augé (2009) Non-places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity, Verso Book
Both the museum and photography are part of a legacy of exhibitionary disciplines and Western European ‘regimes of representation’ embedded in the project of modernity.1 Photography contributed to a standardisation and sanitisation of material remains, as one of the earliest photographic registers were archaeological sites. Under the guise of conservation, deeply rooted, multi-temporal material layers and relationships were eradicated to produce a ‘clean’ image of ancient sites, as if frozen in a perpetual past. The creation of these images led to the enclosure of archaeological sites, detaching them from daily life and affective-corporeal interactions, while reinforcing nation-state narratives.
The interplay between the emergence of photography and archaeology operated as mechanisms of colonial dispossession. Objects and photographs are taken – the act of ‘showing’ and ‘making visible’ is rooted in a primary act of seizure.2 In the 19th century, ancient and looted objects were displayed alongside industrial products at world fairs, reinforcing not only the ‘homology between capitalist commodity and ancient objects, but also embodying the desire of the imperial project to grasp and represent the globe’.3
Displaced objects, bearers of former worldly constellations, were taxonomically divided as they became part of imperial archives. Those objects considered more valuable were put into display. The museum – as a colonial archive – continues to operate as a site of simultaneous accumulation and erasure: the accumulation of commodified objects and the erasure of their original meanings, as well as the traces of colonial violence inflicted during their displacement.
As Ariella Azoulay points out, the ‘movements of forced migration of people and artefacts, as well as their separation’, are not unrelated. Objects are bearers of sacred meaning, anchored in worldly communities of affection between the living and the dead. ‘These worlds were transformed into a construction site where everything could be made into raw material’.4 Objects were seized, photographs shot and collective bodies dismembered.
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Museological mechanisms of display belong to the Western-modern sensorial regime, where objects are accessible only to a select few and exclusively through a distant, disembodied gaze. This mode of display deprive objects of their previously inscribed sensorial possibilities and affective meanings. As archaeologist Yannis Hamilakis describes, the disembodied gaze is constituted through a process of sensory hierarchisation entwined with Europe’s colonial project, where whiteness is associated with the eye attributed to rationality, while ‘the other’ – the colonised subject – is relegated to the ‘tactile realm’. This sensorial regime evolved through an interdependent process of material accumulation and visual representation – colonial violence and the erasure of its traces – culminating in the emergence of anaisthitos,5 a sensorially and affectively impoverished subjectivity.
1 Yannis Hamilakis (2013) Archaeology and the Senses Human Experience, Memory, and Affect, Cambridge University Press
2 Ariella Aisha Azoulay (2019) Potential History. Unlearning Imperialism, Verso Books
3 ibid.
4 ibid.
5 bid. Hamilakis
Seven vessels invoked Seven vessels invoked
(accompanied by gatherered archival material from the British Museum’s website and texts on display)
In certain festivities I recall from childhood, objects embedded in sacred or ritualistic practices are neither still nor distant. They are meant to be touched by hands, sprinkled with water or wine, immersed in incense or flower petals, and other sweet things. Seldomly are they even referred to as ‘objects’; they are simply ‘house’, ‘frog’, ‘snake’, ‘heart’, ‘car’, ‘health certificate’… They can be gathered and carefully stored at home or burned as offerings – if they are meant to. Carried and passed over by hands, they become recipients for gratitude and wishes.
Under the warm light of a clear sky, we delve into the masses of bodies gathered in celebration. In unconscious synchronicity, we lift objects into the air to receive a splash of holy water from above. Memories of these celebrations are filled with strong smells, sounds – and sometimes tastes. The objects exist in a multisensorial realm that inscribes them with agency as they become bearers of countless afflictions of the heart. All these elements and vibrations are inscribed upon the objects. They are kept alive as long as human collective bodies remain connected, as long they are not entirely stripped from their material worlds.
The seven scanned vessels of the museum might well have been part of similar rituals of touch. Little information is found if they had any content as they were found. Grains, oils, jewellery, or precious stones might have been kept inside as they were unearthed. Most likely, after being looted they underwent taxonomical procedures of ‘cleaning’. As much as one may still be touched by their lingering vibrancy, they have become the material evidence of a system that feeds on a constant act of profanation. Separating vessels from content, from each other, from human bodies, from a funerary constellation. In an ultimate act of profanation, they became part of an archive.