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Police probe Swede’s Holocaust ash art work

Swedish police on Friday said they had launched an investigation into an artist who says he used paint mixed from the ashes of Holocaust victims in a watercolour.

Published: 7 December 2012 15:26 CET
Police probe Swede's Holocaust ash art work

Carl Michael von Hausswolff claims he used ashes he took from a crematorium at the Majdanek concentration camp in 1989, mixing them with water to create the painting entitled “Memory Works”.

The monochrome work, featuring vertical brushstrokes in a rectangle representing the suffering of the victims, is on display at the Martin Bryder Gallery in the southern Swedish town of Lund.

A member of the public filed a police complaint against von Hausswolff on December 5 for “disturbing the peace of the dead”, calling the artwork a “desecration of human remains”, said police inspector Annika Johansson.

She said the police complaint was “very unusual”, noting that von Hausswolff took the ashes in Poland, not in Sweden. It was unclear if using the ashes was considered a crime in the Scandinavian country.

Police said the prosecutor’s office would investigate the case and decide whether to press charges.

Gallery owner Martin Bryder refused to comment on the work when contacted, and said the artist was also unavailable.

On the gallery’s website, von Hausswolff explained that he travelled to Poland in 1989 for an exhibit and while there visited the Majdanek concentration camp.

“I collected some ashes from one of the crematoriums but didn’t use it for the exhibit — the material was too emotionally charged with the cruelties that had taken place there,” he said.

“In 2010 I pulled out the jar of ashes and decided to ‘do something’ with it. I took out a few sheets of watercolour paper and decided to cover just a rectangular space with ashes mixed with water.

“When I stepped back and looked at the pictures, they ‘spoke’ to me: figures appeared… as if the ashes contained energy or memories or ‘souls’ from people… people tortured, tormented and murdered by other people in one of the most ruthless wars of the 20th century.”

Swedish author and doctor Salomon Schulman condemned the exhibit as “offensive”.

“I’m never going to step foot inside this gallery to view this desecration of Jewish bodies. Who knows — maybe some of the ashes come from some of my relatives,” he wrote in a debate article in regional daily Sydsvenskan.

The gallery’s website said the exhibit could only be visited by appointment.

AFP/The Local/at

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ART

African-born director’s new vision for Berlin cultural magnet

One of the rare African-born figures to head a German cultural institution, Bonaventure Ndikung is aiming to highlight post-colonial multiculturalism at a Berlin arts centre with its roots in Western hegemony.

Published: 8 July 2023 10:13 CEST
African-born director's new vision for Berlin cultural magnet

The “Haus der Kulturen der Welt” (House of World Cultures), or HKW, was built by the Americans in 1956 during the Cold War for propaganda purposes, at a time when Germany was still divided.

New director Ndikung said it had been located “strategically” so that people on the other side of the Berlin Wall, in the then-communist East, could see it.

This was “representing freedom” but “from the Western perspective”, the 46-year-old told AFP.

Now Ndikung, born in Cameroon before coming to study in Germany 26 years ago, wants to transform it into a place filled with “different cultures of the world”.

The centre, by the river Spree, is known locally as the “pregnant oyster” due to its sweeping, curved roof. It does not have its own collections but is home to exhibition rooms and a 1,000-seat auditorium.

It reopened in June after renovations, and Ndikung’s first project “Quilombismo” fits in with his aims of expanding the centre’s offerings.

The exhibition takes its name from the Brazilian term “Quilombo”, referring to the communities formed in the 17th century by African slaves, who fled to remote parts of the South American country.

Throughout the summer, there will also be performances, concerts, films, discussions and an exhibition of contemporary art from post-colonial societies across Africa, the Americas, Asia and Oceania.

‘Rethink the space’

“We have been trying to… rethink the space. We invited artists to paint walls… even the floor,” Ndikung said.

And part of the “Quilombismo” exhibition can be found glued to the floor -African braids laced together, a symbol of liberation for black people, which was created by Zimbabwean artist Nontsikelelo Mutiti.

According to Ndikung, African slaves on plantations sometimes plaited their hair in certain ways as a kind of coded message to those seeking to escape, showing them which direction to head.

READ ALSO: Germany hands back looted artefacts to Nigeria

His quest for aestheticism is reflected in his appearance: with a colourful suit and headgear, as well as huge rings on his fingers, he rarely goes unnoticed.

During his interview with AFP, Ndikung was wearing a green scarf and cap, a blue-ish jacket and big, sky-blue shoes.

With a doctorate in medical biology, he used to work as an engineer before devoting himself to art.

In 2010, he founded the Savvy Gallery in Berlin, bringing together art from the West and elsewhere, and in 2017 was one of the curators of Documenta, a prestigious contemporary art event in the German city of Kassel.

Convinced of the belief that history “has been written by a particular type of people, mostly white and men,” Ndikung has had all the rooms in the HKW renamed after women.

These are figures who have “done something important in the advancement of the world” but were “erased” from history, he added. Among them is Frenchwoman Paulette Nardal, born in Martinique in 1896.

She helped inspire the creation of the “negritude” movement, which aimed to develop black literary consciousness, and was the first black woman to study at the Sorbonne in Paris.

Reassessing history

Ndikung’s appointment at the HKW comes as awareness grows in Germany about its colonial past, which has long been overshadowed by the atrocities committed during the era of Adolf Hitler’s Nazis.

Berlin has in recent years started returning looted objects to African countries which it occupied in the early 20th century — Burundi, Rwanda, Tanzania, Namibia and Cameroon.

“It’s long overdue,” said Ndikung.

He was born in Cameroon’s capital, Yaounde, into an anglophone family.

The country is majority francophone but also home to an anglophone minority and has faced deadly unrest in English-speaking areas, where armed insurgents are fighting to establish an independent homeland.

One of his dreams is to open a museum in Cameroon “bringing together historical and contemporary objects” from different countries, he said.

He would love to locate it in Bamenda, the capital of Cameroon’s restive Northwest region.

“But there is a war in Bamenda, so I can’t,” he says.

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