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<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\tBy this token, it\u2019s unsurprising that for European colonizers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, one of the most potent instruments of mythmaking was the camera.<\/p>\n
\n\tA new group exhibition entitled A Kind of Paradise: Colonial-Era Photography in Contemporary Art<\/em>, currently on view at Museum Rietberg in Zurich, seeks to pierce this veil of myth. The exhibition challenges audiences to excavate layers of meaning behind these visual documents to reveal the myriad stories muted by a dominant colonial narrative.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cPhotography shapes memory by fixing what is seen and what is silenced,\u201d says Brazilian artist Rosana Paulino, one of twenty artists featured in the exhibition collectively representing the diasporas of Africa, the Americas, Asia, Australia, and Oceania. \u201cWhen images are missing, absence becomes evidence of erasure, violence, and control, demanding that history be reconstructed through fragments, scars, critical imagination, and active engagement rather than passive remembrance.\u201d<\/p>\n A Kind of Paradise<\/em> highlights renowned artists who have undertaken this reconstructive work in their practice. By engaging with colonial-era photography and other visual material through oblique and incisive methods, these artists illuminate previously obscured narratives, and in doing so, offer a kind of healing from the deep wounds of colonialism.<\/p>\n \n\tThe exhibition comprises four thematic sections, each corresponding to a different approach to elevating these multivalent stories.<\/p>\n \n\tThe first, \u201cShapeshifters,\u201d examines how a historical disparity in access to photography equipment and preservation systems across cultures has erased context from existing photographs. Works by Paulino, Dinh Q. L\u00ea, C\u00e9dric Kouam\u00e9 make this void unignorable, and offer the missing piece by filling it with historical perspective or focusing the viewer\u2019s attention to close the gap.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cConfrontation\u201d takes aim at the mythologies perpetuated through the dissemination of early photos depicting people from colonized lands. In this section, artists Wendy Red Star, Omar Victor Diop, Yuki Kihara, Frida Orupabo, and Dimakatso Mathopa mine the tropes and cliches borne of these images, and through satire and recontextualization, offer works that center their own empowerment and subjectivity.<\/p>\n \n\tSasha Huber, Mary Enoch Elizabeth Baxter, and Zena\u00e9ca Singh treat the subjects of these photographs as vectors for compassion in the exhibition\u2019s third section, \u201cCare.\u201d Their pieces challenge entrenched narratives of injustice through redaction and superimposition, shielding subjects from the exploitative gaze of the camera\u2019s lens. Works by Daniel Boyd, Tuli Mekondjo, Sammy Baloji, David Shongo, Wendy Red Star, and Rosana Paulino complete the collection.<\/p>\n \n\tAs a counterpoint to the first section, \u201cIn the Photo Fantastic\u201d interprets missing portions in the historical record \u2014 or photographs themselves \u2014 not as a gap to be filled, but as a launchpad for imaginary interpretations. Drawing upon Saidiya Hartman\u2019s methodology of critical fabulation, Rapha\u00ebl Barontini, Andrea Chung, Aline Motta, and Tshepiso Morop offer works that don\u2019t so much reconstruct the truth as embroider the space around it with dreams of possibility.<\/p>\n \n\tMuseum Rietberg\u2019s own collection of nineteenth- and twentieth-century photographs taken in Asia and Africa are also interwoven throughout the exhibition \u2014 unadorned reference points that serve as nodes between which the artists\u2019 refractory works resonate.<\/p>\n \n\tThe curators have enhanced the exhibition\u2019s empathetic overtones by incorporating the voice of the general public. For the participatory project \u201cDo you remember?,\u201d people from Zurich were invited to share their personal photo albums and offer their own stories and reflections upon these personal artifacts.<\/p>\n \n\tSeveral public events have also been planned around \u201cDo you remember\u201d and the exhibition as a whole, including a conversation between Swiss artist Sasha Huber and Bindi Vora, senior curator at Autograph Gallery in London, on May 9, as well as a workshop on experimental cyanotype with South African printmaker Dimakatso Mathopa on July 4.<\/p>\n \n\tDespite its sober premise, the curatorial approach of A Kind of Paradise<\/em> strikes a definitively hopeful tone. \u201cCritically engaging with colonial-era imagery does not magically undo injustice\u2026 but it does matter,\u201d note photographer Omar Victor Diop and artist Lee Shulman in their book Being There<\/em>, excerpts of which appear in the exhibition. \u201cIt exposes silenced histories, unsettles dominant narratives, and keeps awareness alive.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tIf some viewers find Sontag\u2019s assessment of photography cynical, then they might find a corrective in Edgar Degas\u2019 aphorism that \u201cart is not what you see, but what you make others see.\u201d The artworks on view in Kind of Paradise<\/em> suggest just that \u2014 by adjusting the prism of memory to reveal a whole spectrum of stories, perhaps one can catch a glimpse of a more just, equitable world.<\/p>\n A Kind of Paradise: Colonial-Era Photography in Contemporary Art<\/em> is on view at Museum Rietberg in Zurich through September 6.<\/p>\n![](\"https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Yuki-Kihara.png?w=400\")
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