Die Gruppenausstellung “re:visionism” befasst sich mit diesen und weiteren Fragestellungen und nähert sich so interdisziplinär und spartenübergreifend dem Geschichtsrevisionismus insbesondere in der Kunstszene.

Kann man Kunst und Künstler:in voneinander trennen? Warum werden weiterhin Kunstschaffende gefeiert, die mehr als nur fragwürdige politische Ansichten hatten und haben? Wieso wird fast ausschließlich der eurozentristische Blick auf Geschichte und Kunstgeschichte als Standard genommen?

Die Veranstaltung ermöglicht eine kritische Debatte um Künstler:innen, die in diesem System von Geschichtsrevisionismus profitiert haben, und deren Leben und Werk (beispielsweise trotz eindeutiger NS-Vergangenheit) auch heute noch weitestgehend unkritisch kommentiert, oder gar glorifiziert wird.

Dem werden Werke unterschiedlicher Künstler:innen entgegen gestellt, die genau diesem System den Spiegel vorhalten, aufzeigen, welche Themen vergessen und übersehen werden und eine neue Sichtweise anbieten.

A critical analysis of historical revisionism in the art and cultural scene

Is it possible to distinguish between art and the artist? Why do we keep celebrating artists that have more than questionable political views? Why is the euro-centristic view the only one on history and art history?

The group exhibition “re:visionism” addresses these and other questions and approaches historical revisionism in the art scene from an interdisciplinary and boundary transcending point of view.

The event offers a critical debate about artists who profited off of historical revisionism and whose work and lives are still trivialized and glorified.

To confront this system we present works of various artists who hold up a mirror to highlight missing topics and provide new perceptions.

Kelsey Arrington (American, b. 1992) is an African American Fine Art Photographer. Born and raised in Detroit, MI, Arrington earned her BFA in Photography from the College for Creative Studies in 2015 before moving to Washington DC to work in the arts. She now travels nomadically, creating artwork informed by her exploration of the United States. Through her artwork, Arrington investigates the depths of identity in relation to American sociocultural anthropology. Working through a process of research and photographic manipulation, she aims to excavate personal truths regarding her own Blackness and womanhood in relation to American history.

„My art explores the nexus between identity and gender as a means to excavate personal truths. I am always trying to find myself in history, in the present and in the future; using photographs as a bridge between time and space. There’s an extremity to my interest in identity and how that impacts our world socioculturally. Through photographs I express the duality of my existence as a Black woman in America; a reality cursed by fetishization and dehumanization while simultaneously plagued with praise and pity. Black and a woman. In America, for so many, that is a death sentence. For me, it is a cavernous path but one I walk with pride. My new work, Pain Unveiled, addresses the dark history between the Western world and the African diaspora. In a series of photographic collages, I aim to pay homage to those whose pain was put on display.“

„In 1810, when Saartjie Baartman was in her early twenties, she was persuaded by an English ship’s doctor, William Dunlop, to travel to England to make her fortune. However, as a Khoikhoi woman she was considered an anthropological freak in England, and she found herself put on exhibition, displayed as a sexual curiosity. Dubbed The Hottentot Venus, her image swept through British popular culture. Abolitionists unsuccessfully fought a court battle to free her from her exhibitors.

Baartman was taken to Paris in 1814 and continued to be exhibited as a freak. She became the object of scientific and medical research that formed the bedrock of European ideas about black female sexuality. When she died in 1816, the Musee de l’Homme in Paris took a deathcast of her body, removed her skeleton and pickled her brain and genitals in jars. These were displayed in the museum until as late as 1985.

After five years of negotiating with the French authorities for the return of Saartjie Baartman’s remains, the South African government, together with the Griqua National Council which represents the country’s 200 000 Griqua people, part of the Koi-San group, brought Saartjie Baartman back to South Africa. On Friday 3 May 2002, in a moving ceremony attended by many representatives of the Khoikhoi people, Saartjie Baartman was welcomed back to Cape Town. Her final resting place is in the Eastern Cape, where she was born.“

Saartjie (Sarah) Baartman’s story, written by Saartjie Baartman Centre for Women & Children

In the late 1800s, colonial exhibits showcasing humans from colonized countries as well as pseudo-authentic villages became popular in the western world. So called „Human Zoos“ took place in the US as well as in several west European countries, and aimed to other, devalue, sexualize and stigmatize Black and Brown people. Numerous „performers“ died during these exhibits because of the terrible living conditions, especially due to not enough food as well as no warm clothes being provided to them.

One of them was Sussy Dakaro, an aboriginal young woman, who was trafficked by the manhunter Robert A. Cunningham to America and Europe, and died in 1885 aged 17 in Wuppertal after two years of racial abuse and violence while being exhibited as a „cannibal“ with eight other Aboriginal people.

One of the last colonial exhibits took place in Brussels back in 1958 during the World’s Fair. Especially one image of a Black toddler – „exhibited“ as part of a pseudo-Congolese village – being fed by a white woman, became popular and still reminds us of Europe’s role as a colonizer and its racist history.

What has been done to BIPoC back then, is being continued on a more subtle level today, whether it be Othering through Social Media Campaigns or devaluation in everyday life based on racial prejudices that are rooted in our colonial history.

written by Lisa Jureczko

Sources

Farah Nayeri, Remembering the Racist History of ‘Human Zoos’, in: The New York Times, 2021

Jana Turek, „Völkerschau“ im Zoo Wuppertal / Ein Gedenkstein für „Sussy Dakaro“, in: Deutschlandfunk, 2017

o. A., Das Schicksal eines Aborigine-Mädchens, in: WZ, 2017

o. A., Human Zoos: A Shocking History of Shame and Exploitation, in: CBC

Paul Ayihawu is a Nigerian artist born in 1995. He is a self-taught artist who uses oil, acrylic and charcoal as his medium of expression. He is inspired by the works of Kerry James Marshall, Kehinde Wiley, and Njideka Crossby in his pursuit of painting the culture of black people in a new light. He uses his art to tell untold, unheard, and silent stories of Africans, with a focus on Nigeria. His work was selected for Joburg Fringe 2020 in South Africa, Ethan Cohen Gallery group exhibition 2020-2021 in London and exhibited in Lagos Fringe 2020 in Nigeria among others.

„Being a self-taught artist, my approach is to experiment with human forms and investigate the psychology of being, by capturing the emotional state of my subject at a particular moment and by asking: ‘how do we feel a sense of belonging in an environment that constantly tells us we are not enough?’ I work with mixed media using charcoal, oil, acrylic, and fabric to create a dialogue of human anatomy. I particularly love rendering the flesh tones in charcoal while all other parts are covered with vibrant colours. Sometimes I infuse signs and symbols of the rich West African heritage into my work to further illustrate my rich ancestry as a Nigerian/Beninoise.

My figurative pieces focus more on the socio-cultural impact of the African youth as I find meaning in the mundane activities and exuberance scene in the neighbourhood. I am also intrigued by the impact of colonialism on black culture and these are seen in the way I portray the figures in my painting which are characterized by poise, elegance, and iconic postures of the old masters’ paintings. I use my art as a form of activism to challenge the contemporary issues in the society.“

„The use of photography to represent European superiority in Sub-Saharan Africa was one of Empire’s most powerful weapons. Paired with the ‘legitimacy’ of the photograph, colonial powers were able to portray their apparent supremacy over peoples whom they believed to be uncivilized. The power of the photograph to depict purported truth reinforced the ideas of Empire and portrayed Africa as a place of savagery, death, and disease. This is a representation still common today. Yet it was not until colonial powers invaded Africa with missionaries and scientists that the continent grew ‘dark’ as it was flooded with ‘light’ (Ryan, 1997). This ‘light’ was often represented in photographs depicting white people standing in stark contrast to Africans, showing a difference in dress, stance, and power relations. They are all carrying specific racial messages. (…)

Race is created by one culture in order to justify its power over another. In this case, colonialists developed racism to justify power over African peoples. According to Lewis (1973), there are three ideological bases for racism: the separation between the culture of the colonist and the colonized; the exploitation of this difference to the betterment of the colonist; and the use of these theoretical differences as fact. Relying on these three criteria one can argue that photography was used as a tool to portray and ingrain these ideas into the master discourse of white superiority. 

In addressing the first criteria colonial powers purposefully created images that contained blatant contrast between Africans and Europeans. This contrast played upon ‘light’ versus ‘dark,’ ‘civilized’ and ‘uncivilized’. There are vastly different cultures and peoples living in Sub-Saharan Africa and so it was a necessary step for colonialists to depict a homogenized Africa in order to create a separation between cultures. This step was crucial because it was the beginning of the still prevalent idea that Africa and its many nations are indistinguishable from each other. Through photographs and similar tools of representation, ideas of the ‘superior’ European were widely circulated and created through the trope of the ‘primitive’ African.

Perhaps the most powerful example of such representation is how these constructed ideas have become so embedded in western culture is a simple screen shot. A search done in Google Images portrays the exact stereotypes being researched in this paper, providing photographs of people dressed exclusively in traditional, ‘authentic’, and tribal attire. Above the original search bar other suggested searches include: poor, culture, starving, dancing, and AIDS. This search engine is structured to work with the perpetuation of mass media images and suggest the most commonly searched topics in regards to a subject. It is obvious then that those ideas about Africa constructed over a century ago are still present and prevalent in society today.“

Written by Hannah Mabry 

Hannah Mabry, Photography, Colonialism and Racism, in: International Affairs Review, 2014

Agbaka Oryiman is a self taught artist, painter, writer and story teller who loves to work in all mediums and styles of art, traditionally a Ballpoint pen artist who creates realistic portraits of his subject. He uses the ballpoint pen and ink because they are tools from ancient times used in telling stories and writings. He retells the stories and experiences of his subject by capturing their individual expressions, understanding the line language and understanding line movements while creating. He loves to educate young black Africans about the power that they posses by creating paintings about Africans and retelling their history. He also likes to dive into other aspects such as sculpting and street art painting. Agbaka loves making paintings on subjects from variety of topics like politics, music, culture, nature. Based in Nigeria currently in Benue State, living everyday by the dot.

„In order to understand the history of braids and Black American hair culture specifically, it is necessary to look at the impact of slavery on African women. Slavery brought not only physical and psychological trauma, but it also brought erasure. In an attempt to strip them of their humanity and culture, traffickers would shave the heads of women. Colonizers effectively attempted to take away the women’s lifeline to their homeland. Braids were also known to be used to hide rice or seeds in their hair in order to have food to eat on their Middle Passage journey. As women endured the hardships of slavery, there was no longer time to create intricate styles. Sunday, which offered somewhat of a relief from the harsh conditions, became the only day women could prep their hair. Since hairstyles needed to last the entire week, African-American women began to wear their hair in more simplistic styles. They chose to wear styles like single plaits that were easier to manage, and used the oils available to them, like kerosene, to condition them. 

Remarkably, Black women used braids for another important use: a secret messaging system for slaves to communicate with one another. People used braids as a map to freedom. For example the number of plaits worn could indicate how many roads to walk or where to meet someone to help them escape bondage. Similarly in the early fifteenth century, hair functioned as a carrier of messages in most West African societies including the Wolof, Mende, Mandingo, and Yoruba. Hair was an important piece of a complex language system, in which it communicated the identity of the person wearing the braids.“

written by Lydia Kiros

Lydia Kiros, The Rich History of Braids, in: Amplify Africa, 2020

On July 2nd, 1964 – 20 years after the attack on Hitler and on the day of remembrance for anti-fascist resistance fighters – the so-called Fluxus Performance of Joseph Beuys took place. A conflict arose between Beuys and one of his spectators which lead to a brawl between both of them. Beuys ended up with a bleeding nose, pulled out a crucifix out of his suitcase, then holding it like a chalice, and raising his right arm in a manner that resembled the Hitler salute. Just another performance and gesture that was both trivialized and smeared by the press afterwards.

Beuys, who joined the army voluntarily, was temporarily deployed in Poznan between May and December 1941. Beuys always claimed that he heard about violence and r*pe, but that these atrocities did not take place where he was deployed. According to Riegel, it is impossible that Beuys never witnessed the violence of German occupying troops, that he never neither saw a single forced laborer nor none of the local concentration camps inmates, especially because it is documented that the SS regularly killed jewish citizens in gas vans or cavities with caustic lime. Up to 15,000 people were murdered in the concentration camp of Poznan, which was located at a distance of approximately 1 km from Beuys military station. When applying for the professorship at the Art Academy in Düsseldorf, Beuys claimed that he had received several military badges, for example the Iron Cross. Riegel assumes, that Beuys had probably found them on the streets at the end of the war when it became common for officers to throw those badges away in fear of consequences or sanctions by the enemy troops. Also: receiving the Iron Cross by authorities always implied killing numerous soldiers of the enemies‘ troops. Does this mean, Beuys was actually a murderer?

Beuys, who participated on several meetings with his former comrades-in-arms until the 1970s, was surrounded by very few women and quite a lot of old white men with a Nazi history. The following is an incomplete list of Beuys‘ Nazi friends or Nazi’s he admired:

• Dr. Wilhelm Schiefer, member of the National Socialist party, author of books with openly antisemitic contents and principal of Beuys‘ former school. When directly asked in 1982, Beuys denied that those contents were taught in his school.

• Hanns Schwarz, head of the Hitler Youth orchestra and Beuys‘ former music teacher, who was teaching his pupils in his Storm Troopers (SA) uniform. Although he was known for being a “fanatic National Socialist”, Beuys admired him for being a “very attractive teacher”.
• Konrad Lorenz, a zoologist whose Nazi career has been made public in the 1970s and whose racist theories were based on ideas such as the need of a biological selection or differences between human “races”. Throughout his life, Beuys claimed to have known Lorenz although there’s no evidence that they’ve actually ever met each other.
• Walther Brüx, founder of the artist association “Niederrheinischen Künstlerbundes Kleve” to which Beuys belonged, too. Brüx was a former student of Bernhard Bleeker, a lecturer and sculptor who amongst other works created a then well-known Hitler bust. Bleeker was member of the National Socialist party from 1932 to 1945 as well as of organizations such as the National Socialist association for lecturers. 
• Dr. Hildebrand Gurlitt, director of the Art association of Rhineland was known as Hitler’s art dealer who had been authorized by Goering to deal in so-called “degenerated art”. In 1954, Gurlitt’s secretary Marie Louise von Maltzahn assigned Beuys to produce furniture for Gurlitt.
• Hermann Wurmbach, father of Beuys‘ wife Eva, was member of the National Socialist party since 1933 as well as the SA. He was known as “fanatic and convinced Nazi” as well as “race theorist”. As a member and leader of the National Socialist association for lecturers he was co-responsible for jewish lecturers and dissidents loosing their jobs at the University of Bonn. Especially his “scientific” publications show how much of a convinced Nazi he was: in one of his scripts from 1940 he explains the alleged physical and mental differences between human races, and why he thinks the “nordic races” is superior to any other race. Furthermore, Wurmbach commented positively on the concepts of euthanasia and forced sterilization. 
• Knut Hamsun, a Norwegian author who was also a passionate supporter of Hitler. On May, 7th 1945 he published an orbituary for Hitler. Because of this orbituary as well as his membership in the Norwegian National Socialist party Hamsun was arrested and convicted. In 1961, during the trial against Nazi functionary Adolf Eichmann, Beuys wrote down a note that says: “Immediate post-war era – most important man: Hamsun!”
• Karl Ströher, year-long funder of Beuys. Ströher was known being a “passionate supporter of Hitler” to whom he wrote numerous letters, and founded a local group that was controlled by the SA. Ströher also dispossessed his former jewish business partner between 1938 and 1940, and exploited forced laborers.
• Erich Marx, became Beuys‘ funder after Ströhers death in 1979. Marx became a member of the National Socialist party in 1939.
• Werner Georg Haverbeck, member of the National Socialist party since 1926 and former member of the SS, who later in life founded the so-called Collegium Humanum with his wife Ursula Wetzel-Haverbeck, which was banned a few years later due to its distribution of theories surrounding the Holocaust denial. In 1981 he signed a racist script of alt-right academics whose aim was to warn about the German nations “foreign infiltration” and its risks for the German people.
• August Haußleiter, a politician who was an active member in several rightwing and far-right organizations and parties. Beuys stood as a candidate for the AUD, a party founded by Haußleiter. The AUD was considered to be a far-right party and was monitored by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution.
• Georg Otto, active member in several rightwing organizations and parties
• Herbert Gruhl, later founder of the right-ecological ÖPD party
• Baldur Springmann, president of the ÖPD, later functionary of the AUD, and former Nazi as well as member of the SA and SS.
• Beuys met Haverbeck, Haußleiter, Otto, Gruhl, and Springmann in order to found a new party (Die Grünen) in 1977.
  Karl Fastabend, Beuys‘ secretary, who wrote nearly all of Beuys political texts and in the 1970s, was a former Nazi, who joined the SA as well as the National Socialist party in 1932, and the SS in 1933.
• Hermann Josef Abs, board spokesman of the German bank, whose capital grew due to the so-called Aryanization and who lead a company near Auschwitz where thousands of forced laborers died during the Nazi era. Abs belonged to Beuys close relatives.
• Wilhelm Schmundt, anthroposophist and brother of Rudolf Schmundt, one of the closest confidants of Hitler, who died during the attack on Hitler on July 20th 1944. Beuys and Schmundt were in contact since their first encounter in 1973.
• “wir selbst – Zeitschrift für nationale Identität”, a right-wing magazine that published a cover story filling seven pages with numerous photographs of Beuys and his portrait on its cover in 1982. Part of the article was Beuys‘ “Aufruf zur Alternative”. The Free International University, an association founded by Beuys, was named as author of the cover story.

How does a family cope with the own entanglement in Germany’s Nazi history, especially if one of your relatives is Heinrich Himmler, the person who prompted the Holocaust and is therefore responsible for the death of millions of jewish people? 

In 2005, Katrin Himmler – granddaughter of Heinrich Himmler’s brother Ernst – published a book about her families history, shedding light on how historical revisionism influenced her own idea of her granddad’s role in Nazi Germany. While her family never denied Heinrich Himmler’s atrocities, they trivialized the complicity of other Himmler relatives. Both Gebhard and Ernst Himmler profited off of Heinrich’s status and contacts. Furthermore, private letters show that also their parents were passionate about the politics in Nazi Germany and their children’s careers.

What Katrin Himmler depicts in her book can be described as year-long revisionist gaslighting and stonewalling: when asked about her past relatives‘ opinion regarding National Socialism, her parents responded with vague statements or claimed that they “didn’t know” whether their relatives knew what was going on or that they were simply “too naive” to understand the devastating consequences of Hitler’s politics. Those who asked questions were also met with daylong accusatory silence or confronted with romanticizing stories about their Nazi ancestor’s benevolence towards other family members or neighbors. Especially their narrative of Ernst’s passivity didn’t fit to Katrin’s archive finds of him becoming a member of the National Socialist party in 1931 and of the SS in 1933.

At the same time, the historical revisionism in private seems to be a consequence of the Nazi propaganda throughout the war years: while the German army lost battle after battle, the press reported about victories that never had happened. The defeat came as a surprise for many, so denying the very own responsibility appeared to be an adequate coping mechanism for numerous former supporters and perpetrators of the German Nazi regime.

Katrin Himmler explains how the lies about Heinrich Himmler being an “individual case” or an “abnormality” in their family history and about them only rarely being in contact with the Nazi official served them to appear “normal” and therefore not complicit in the Nazi’s crimes. It saved them from the consequences they might have faced in the post-war era when the denazification began and those who were economically thriving in Nazi Germany had to find ways how to keep their positions of power with the new political rulers. 

At the end of the day, people like Heinrich Himmler were not only dependent on the general population’s approval, they actually would have never been able to get their power without the masses‘ support, their belief in the German’s populations‘ superiority, their patriotism or their ignorance.

As Andrew Moxon (alias Julius Goat) wrote on Twitter a few years ago: “Historians have a word for Germans who joined the Nazi party, not because they hated Jews, but out of a hope for restored patriotism, or a sense of economic anxiety, or a hope to preserve their religious values, or dislike of their opponents, or raw political opportunism, or convenience, or ignorance, or greed. That word is “Nazi.” Nobody cares about their motives any more.“

written by Lisa Jureczko

Sources

Catrin Lorch, Die wirren rechten Ideen des Joseph Beuys, in: Süddeutsche Zeitung, 2018

Christiane Hoffmans, „Das ist völkische Diktion in Reinkultur“, in: WELT, 2013

Christiane Hoffmans, Das rechte, völkische Gedankengut des Joseph Beuys, in: WELT, 2018

Hans-Joachim Müller, Joseph Beuys, ein Fachverkäufer der hohlen Kunst, in: WELT, 2017

Hans Peter Riegel, Beuys: Die Biographie (Band 1 bis 4), 2021 

Hans Peter Riegel, Interview: „Ich verdanke Beuys den unabdingbaren Willen, etwas zu bewirken.“, in: SWR2, 2021

Hans Peter Riegel, Interview: „Man muss Beuys den Heiligenschein nehmen.“, in: die presse, 2021

Hans Peter Riegel, Interview: „Beuys war bis ins Mark völkisch.“, in: Frankfurther Rundschau, 2013

Katrin Himmler, Die Brüder Himmler, Frankfurt am Main 2008 

Thomas Kerstan, Lernen für den Führer, Ein Gespräch mit der Historikerin Anne C. Nagel, in: DIE ZEIT Nr.45/2012

Andreas Daams, Der Klever Bildhauer Walther Brüx, in: NRZ, 2016

o.A., Bernhard Bleeker, Biographie

Lisa Jureczko is a freelance photographer, artist, author and curator. In her work she sheds light on the fashion industrie‘s impact on humans as well as on our environment, but also on social justice issues in general, especially regarding the consequences and facets of psychological violence. Furthermore, she aims to destigmatize certain topics with an interdisciplinary and intersectional approach.

Lisa Jureczko was born and raised in Düsseldorf and studied Art History, Italian and Archaeology in Rome and Cologne. Her scientific publications focus on portrait science and the cultural reception of antiquity. In 2014 she began to work as a freelance fashion and beauty photographer, which resulted in numerous international publications and exhibitions.

Her current work is characterized by the motivation to combine art, activism and science.

Avan Amir Weis is a German-Irish artist who collages photography, poetry and a splash of ink and paint to analyze gender, sexuality, mental health and desire. They often use their own body to get rid of the ‚male gaze‘ and establish a new view on what we describe as our ’self‘. Born in Hamburg they moved to Wuppertal to go to school and spend most of their childhood on a ship between Germany and Ireland. They studied Philosophy, Islam Studies, Theology at Ruhr-Universität Bochum and African Studies, Philosophy and Dutch Studies at Universität zu Köln with a focus on Art and Gender. For several years now they work as a (feminist) journalist, photographer and lecturer for youth projects always searching for their artistic voice.