On 29 January, we inaugurated in Barcelona the itinerant exhibition A qui pertany la història – Lluites per la descolonització dels museus, developed within the (Tr)Afrian(t)s programme. Curated by myself together with Alba Valenciano-Mañé and Celeste Muñoz, the exhibition aims to make visible the struggles of activism around the decolonisation of heritage and demands for restitution.
In Catalonia, as early as the 1980s, the sculptor and intellectual Leandro Mbomio channelled, from within the government of Equatorial Guinea, an official request for the restitution of human remains extracted during the colonial period and deposited at the Museu Etnològic de Barcelona. In the 1990s, Alphonse Arcelin led a campaign that culminated in the removal of the stuffed body of a man exhibited at the Museu Darder de Banyoles and its repatriation to Botswana.
These cases, often silenced, demonstrate that claims for the decolonisation of heritage have a history in our local context. The exhibition seeks to situate these debates within a broader historical framework, connecting them to global struggles against racism and colonial plunder. Recovering these voices and placing them at the centre is essential to imagining a future in which memory and justice become foundational pillars of cultural policies.
The exhibition has previously been shown at the Biblioteca Central Xavier Amorós and the Factoria Cultural Coma Cros. It is currently on view at the Faculty of Geography and History, University of Barcelona and will move to the University of Lleida later in February.
Photographs by Luciana Hoffmann @luhoffmannfoto