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Looters: Itinerant Images of West African Architecture
Looters is an exhibition in which contemporary art and design practices are deployed to critically examine images of global exchange and imperial relations in the late-Atlantic period, the late-17th century through circa 1900.
Organized by art historian Adrian Anagnost and artist Manol Gueorguiev, along with artist Abdi Farah, the exhibition draws on archival images in European maps, prints, drawings, and photographs depicting West African architecture from the Kingdoms of Ouidah, Dahomey, and Benin (across the present-day Republic of Benin and Nigeria). Gueorguiev, a photographer and sculptor, re-photographed and transformed map details and print images into 35mm slides, and created sculptures on which the images are projected. Painter Abdi Farah created window prints based on details from these same maps, prints, and photographs, which include Dutch travel compilations, French marine cartography, British colonial officials’ accounts, and French anthropology volumes.