Robert Ssempijja writes about artefacts in museums — about objects once used in daily life, some with spiritual meaning. More often than you might think, he noticed, the accompanying labels explaining the object are simply wrong.
One example: something still used in Uganda today to store beer — a small hollowed-out wooden vessel wrapped in banana-fibre — is displayed in a museum as an “unknown object,” with the only confirmed detail that “it is covered with maize powder.”
Why not ask people to help interpret things, Robert says. It may once have made sense to let experts in cabinets define and preserve them. But now we live in different times. Museums have the potential to become living spaces; places of gathering and collective care.
Another proposition: let’s take a good look at the collections. Some pieces might not belong in a museum after all. Some artefacts have been treated with heavy chemicals to keep them from decaying. They can’t be touched with bare hands. (Wasn’t it Medea, who gifted a poison-soaked cloak to her ex’s new lover?)
The soft bark-cloth mantles in the SKD museum (Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden) — an entire hall of them — can no longer be worn.
Robert asked a designer Joseph Tebandeke to create a contemporary bark-cloth coat. Imagine, he said, if this tradition had simply continued. If the design of the mantles had evolved over time. If the development of style had not been blocked by colonial rule and its imported fear of witchcraft. What would they look like, these mantles? How would they feel?
Robert Ssempijja will be artist-in-residence at Ballhaus Ost in Berlin, together with Company Christoph Winkler. From November 11 to 30 they will work on Twaliwo. The premiere will follow shortly after. From December 4 to 7, they will perform in Berlin.