“…The struggle of black people inevitably appear in an intensely cultural form because the social formation in which their distinct political traditions are now manifest has constructed the arena of politics on ground overshadowed by centuries of metropolitan capitalist development, thereby denying them recognition as legitimate politics. Blacks conduct a class struggle in and through race. The BC of race and class cannot be empirically separated, the class character of black struggles is not a result of the fact that blacks are predominantly proletarian, thought this is true…”- (Frank Talk Staff Writers in ‘Azania Salutes Tosh’ – circa 1981)
front cover:
Tosh by Steve Gordon
back cover:
Kippie by Basil Breakey
Invisible Inventories – the Zine! (Iwalewa Books, 2021)
Published by iwalewabooks (Bayreuth/Johannesburg) and Kwani (Nairobi), the contributions from IIP members and Kenyan museum professionals and practitioners critically reflect museum and restitution politics but also the limits of the cooperation between African and Europeans museums. Besides conversations, essays and texts that accompany the artworks in the exhibition with the same title, the publication also contains a number of object biographies written by different authors that provide different perspectives on the very same objects.
The zine supports the decolonising approach of the project by providing perspectives yet underrepresented in international discussions and aims to contribute to the debate on colonial histories that are inscribed in collections and museum.
With contributions by The Nest Collective, Jacky Kwonyike, Leonie Chima Emeka and Niklas Obermann, Chao Tayiana Maina, Sam Hopkins and Simon Rittmeier, George Abungu, Marian Nur Goni, Juma Ondeng', SHIFT Collective, Leonie Neumann and Frauke Gathof, Clara Himmelheber, Philemon Nyamanga and Lydia Nafula, Philip Jimbi Katana, Wandile Kasibe.