Hundreds of independent art and museums spaces were forced to close due to the Corona-Crisis. In this series we are celebrating the fantastic artistic events that are right now sitting behind closed doors. With THE FACULTY OF SENSING – Thinking With, Through and by Anton Wilhelm Amo, Kunstverein Braunschweig has worked in close cooperation with Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung to develop a project in honor of Anton Wilhelm Amo, an outstanding philosopher of the 18th century.
Adjani Okpu-Egbe, Installation view Kunstverein Braunschweig, 2020. Courtesy the artist and Sulger-Buel Gallery, London. Photo: Stefan Stark
Anton Wilhelm Amo (* around 1700 — † after 1753) is considered to be the first Black academic and philosopher in Germany. His work was largely pushed to the margins and rendered obscure. Amo studied philosophy and law in Halle and positioned himself with his dissertations on the mind-body problem (1734) at the University of Wittenberg and Treatise on the Art of Philosophising Soberly and Accurately (1738) as an early thinker of the Enlightenment.
In a 2013 essay The Enlightenment’s ‘Race’ Problem, and Ours for the New York Times’ philosophy page The Stone, Justin E. H. Smith wonders how and why philosophers like Immanuel Kant or David Hume could afford to be so explicitly racist, at a period when a contemporary of theirs Anton Wilhelm Amo was excelling as a philosopher. The explanation for this can be found in processes of erasure in relation to what Michel-Rolph Trouillot has called “Silencing the Past.”
On the basis of Amo’s writings and their reception, highly topical issues of referentiality, erasure, and canonization will be discussed in this exhibition with Akinbode Akinbiyi, Bernard Akoi-Jackson, andcompany&Co., Anna Dasović, Jean-Ulrick Désert, Theo Eshetu, Adama Delphine Fawundu, Lungiswa Gqunta, Olivier Guesselé-Garai, Patricia Kaersenhout, Kitso Lynn Lelliott, Antje Majewski, Claudia Martínez Garay, Adjani Okpu-Egbe, RESOLVE Collective, Konrad Wolf
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Lungiswa Gqunta, Benisya Ndawoni: Return to the Unfamiliar, 2020. Courtesy the artist. Photo: Stefan Stark
Lungiswa Gqunta, Benisya Ndawoni: Return to the Unfamiliar, 2020. Courtesy the artist. Photo: Stefan Stark
Lungiswa Gqunta, Benisya Ndawoni: Return to the Unfamiliar, 2020. Courtesy the artist. Photo: Stefan Stark
Patricia Kaersenhout, While we were Kings and Queens, 2020. Courtesy the artist and Wilfred Lentz Rotterdam. Photo: Stefan Stark.
Patricia Kaersenhout, While we were Kings and Queens, 2020. Courtesy the artist and Wilfred Lentz Rotterdam. Photo: Stefan Stark.
Patricia Kaersenhout, While we were Kings and Queens, 2020. Courtesy the artist and Wilfred Lentz Rotterdam. Photo: Stefan Stark.
Patricia Kaersenhout, While we were Kings and Queens, 2020. Courtesy the artist and Wilfred Lentz Rotterdam. Photo: Stefan Stark.
Patricia Kaersenhout, While we were Kings and Queens, 2020. Courtesy the artist and Wilfred Lentz Rotterdam. Photo: Stefan Stark.
Theo Eshetu, Amo Speaks, 2020. Courtesy the artist. Photo: Stefan Stark
Jean-Ulrick Désert, Installation view Kunstverein Braunschweig 2020. Courtesy the artist. Photo: Stefan Stark.
Jean-Ulrick Désert, “Paradisum Calamitate” (Paradise Catastrophe) after C.D.F., 2020. Courtesy the artist. Photo: Stefan Stark.
Jean-Ulrick Désert, Guten Morgen Preußen, 2009. Courtesy the artist. Photo: Stefan Stark.
Jean-Ulrick Désert, Vater Sohn vor Wasser Pyramiden, 2009. Courtesy the artist. Photo: Stefan Stark.
Olivier Guesselé-Garai, Their eyes were watching cop, 2015/2020. Copyright: ADAGP, Paris. Courtesy the artist. Photo: Stefan Stark.
Olivier Guesselé-Garai, Their eyes were watching cop, 2015/2020. Copyright: ADAGP, Paris. Courtesy the artist. Photo: Stefan Stark.
THE FACULTY OF SENSING – Thinking With, Through and by Anton Wilhelm Amo, Installation view, Kunstverein Braunschweig 2020. Copyright: VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn / ADAGP, Paris. Courtesy the artists. Photo: Stefan Stark
Antje Majewski, Installation view Kunstverein Braunschweig 2020. Copyright: VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn. Courtesy the artist and neugerriemschneider, Berlin. Photo: Stefan Stark
Adama Delphine Fawundu, Sunsum, in Body, 2020. Courtesy the artist. Photo: Stefan Stark
Akinbode Akinbiyi, Installation view Kunstverein Braunschweig 2020. Courtesy the artist. Photo: Stefan Stark
Akinbode Akinbiyi, Installation view Kunstverein Braunschweig 2020. Courtesy the artist. Photo: Stefan Stark
Kitso Lynn Lelliott, 291 years condensed into the same number of seconds (or) one day out there our paths might cross, 2020. Courtesy the artist. Photo: Stefan Stark
Kitso Lynn Lelliott, 291 years condensed into the same number of seconds (or) one day out there our paths might cross, 2020. Courtesy the artist. Photo: Stefan Stark
Claudia Martínez Garay, Muy blanco para indio y muy poco para blanco / Too white for a cholo, not enough for a white man, 2020. Courtesy and Copyright of the artist and GRIMM, Amsterdam|New York. Photo: Stefan Stark
Claudia Martínez Garay, Muy blanco para indio y muy poco para blanco / Too white for a cholo, not enough for a white man, 2020. Courtesy and Copyright of the artist and GRIMM, Amsterdam|New York. Photo: Stefan Stark
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