Closing Event: Widening the scope of History & Memory

Widening the scope of History & Memory
In colonized cities across the world, extensive work went into preparing a tabula rasa, or blank slate – ‘cleansing’ public space of time and history so that the colonisers could construct their own orders, references and visual cultures. We should widen the scope and range of our knowledge about the contributions that various individuals and visionary groups of people have made to the texture of our cities.

Zahira Asmal and Wayne Modest in conversation about the way history is memorialised in museums and public space. How may we document and disseminate marginalised histories and memories to make a more vital and inclusive memory of history for the public?

Zahira Asmal is an author and curator, and director of The City, a research, publishing and placemaking agency she founded in Cape Town, South Africa.  Her current project, See, explores the equal representation in the memorialisation of history and the construction of resilient postcolonial urban identities. Zahira served as advisor to the Africa Architecture Awards in 2017 and is currently serving on the board of advisors for the International Archive of Women in Architecture.

Wayne Modest is the Head of the Research Center for Material Culture, the research institute of the Tropenmuseum, Museum Volkenkunde and Africa Museum, that serves as a focal point for research on the historical and contemporary meanings of ethnographic collections in the Netherlands. He is also professor of Material Culture and Critical Heritage Studies in the faculty of humanities at the VU University Amsterdam. 

This event is free for visitors of Kunsthal KAdE.