What We See

The exhibition What We See looks at the disturbing history of Anthropometry and its vocal and pictorial documents from southern Africa. It focuses on the “Archive of Dying Races”, an archive of the bodies of male and female Africans assembled in 1931 by the German artist, Hans Liechtenecker, in Namibia, i.e. in what was then (German) South-West Africa.

What We See concentrates on the men and women who, in a colonial context, had to suffer having their bodies measured, casts of their faces taken, or to be the object of anthropometric photography and voice recordings. These voice recordings were only recently rediscovered by the cultural historian, Anette Hoffmann, and have now been translated.

With the help of these depressing documents, the exhibition constructs a fragile space of images and voices, stories and portraits, historical documents and contemporary artworks.