Between Memories and Possibilities

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Returning Tairona Goldworks to the Kogi People
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Culture & Development is a foundation that aims to support endangered cultures according to the demands of UNESCO. One of its main concerns is to return cultural property to their traditional owners, particularly hallows of living, indigenous peoples and religions that were stolen in the wake of European colonialism. Since 2010 I have been working together with philosopher Hanune Shalati under C&D's umbrella on the special case of the famous Tairona goldworks which are still sacred to their descendants, the Kogi people. The majority of these relics was stolen from temples and tombs and acquired by western art collectors, causing tremendous grief amongst their traditional owners.

images taken with a canded camera at ███████ Gallery; Tairona goldworks are stolen hallows of a living culture, the Kogi people

With financial support from the German Dohmen Collection for Contemporary Art we were able to identify such goldworks on the art market and to purchase and return them to their traditional owners in Colombia. These hallows are now part of their designated, religious practice and worshipped amidst their people once again. Christoph Balzar (curator) and Hanune Shalati (philosopher) accompanied the process of this restitution as scientific and artistic researchers. During our work we could verify that the Kogis’ religious ceremonies depend on the ownership of the Tairona goldworks. To us this is the main argument why such unique artefacts do not belong into western art collections. The interviews, discussions and ceremonies documented during the process of this restitution are going to be published as literary essays and mixed-media exhibitions in the near future.

The Kogi mamas asking the returned goldworks ("sewa") what to do; the ceremony "asolear el oro"

Four years before the return of those hallows another NGO had started to prepare a network of valuable contacts that made our work possible: The Dutch Stichting Kleinschalige Ontwikkelingsprojekten (SKOP) had collected considerable quantities of gold and donated them to the Kogi people, thus enabling them to produce the first goldwork since the expulsion of their ancestors by the spanish crown.

The first Kogi goldwork was made after an image of a Tairona goldwork. This "sewa" of the frog was blessed by the elder Mama Benardo and Maria Giuseppe.

souvenirs

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installation view "souvenirs" (for the collector), 2011; Under the umbrella of the foundation Culture & Development e.V. we have developped a program that aims to acquire Tairona goldworks from the art market by motivating art collectors to purchase and donate such hallows to their traditional owners, thus becoming patrons of Tairona and Kogi heritage.


The object is the new subject!
interview with Christina Meyers, Art and Text magazine

CM: What are those gold objects you show in your work?
CB: “Nyúi sewa” should not be referred to as objects. They might be considered "subjective objects", at least to the Kogi they are gods with special needs. The three “nyúi sewa” you can see on my photos were generously donated to their traditional owners, the Kogi, by the Dohmen Collection from Germany. We agreed that illicitly acquired artefacts of highly religious value to a living culture should not be treated like mere artworks in western collections. I wanted to portray these "subjective objects" the moment they were extracted from the art market and returned to their original context: already embedded on cocoa leaves, their spiritual nourishment they receive from the Kogi priests but still in front of supposedly neutral, deadpan backgrounds like in common ethnological photographs. Of course, such images cannot provide substitutes for originals in ethnological collections. But I for my part don’t wanna have those originals, anyway, if it means a sacrilege in the eyes of their traditional owners. My photos of the “nyúi sewa” are meant as a reminder of the satisfaction of renunciation for the collector and everybody who helpes to return them to their believers. Consider them souvenirs.”

hàte nyúi on coca leaves; lambda print, 20,0 x 28,0 cm, 2011


“(…) the objects were known to have come from tombs and offering places, that is to say, from ritual contexts. What is surprising is that no attempt should have been made earlier to reconstruct this ritual context and to link it with the shamanism of American Indians which is clearly evidenced by so many artefacts. This dimension of ideas and significances had been overlooked, and emphasis had been laid instead on such aspects of the goldwork as its ethno-history or merely formal characteristics." [p. 26] “…there are still archaeologists, ethnologists, museologists and art historians who ignore or deny the importance of these contexts and prefer to deal only with objects isolated either in space or time. And so museums tend to fill up their display cabinets with lifeless archaeological collections lacking that dimension of vitality that can only be provided by a broad ethnological-historical vision.” [p. 126]

Reichel-Dolmatoff, 2006
Gerardo Reichel-Dolmatoff: Goldwork and Shamanism: An Iconographic Study of the Gold Museum of the Banco de la Republica, Colombia, Bogotá, 2006.

Cultural Reproduction

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The Renaissance of Working with Gold
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the political representation of Columbia's indigenous peoples: Gonawindua Tayrona

The Kogis' plans to revive the traditional craft of working with gold have inspired us. Our goal is to support them in this endeavor by providing them with Tairona originals as models for new goldworks. With them they cannot only study the iconographic language of their ancestors and their traditional production processes, they are also the only ones who can safeguard those artefacts’ religious and cultural significance. In this endeavor they deserve support. We were asked to make further purchases of their heritage on their behalf, currently the only way to return what was lost. Please contact us for detailed information on how you or your enterprise can help:

Christoph Balzar: cb(at)cultureanddevelopment.org
Hanune Shalati: hs(at)cultureanddevelopment.org


Mama Padilla (2. from left), Mama Juan Mamatacan (former president of Gonawindua Tayrona, 3. from left) and his wife Maria Giuseppe inspect a list of the Kogis' tangible heritage for sale at ███████ Gallery; one of the next "sewa" planned to be made by the elders is a pectoral of "haba sé" (engl.: mother). Its design originates from an exhibit at the Museo del Oro.

Muse Museum - Das Gold der Tairona

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Lichtbildvortrag von Christoph Balzar und Hanune Shalati, Berlin
23. Januar 2012, Montag, 19.30 Uhr
Werkbundarchiv - Museum der Dinge
Oranienstraße 25, 10999 Berlin
www.museumderdinge.de


Der Vortrag findet im Rahmen der Ausstellung "Museumsbauhütte II" statt (siehe http://www.museumderdinge.de/stand_der_dinge/) und wird veranstaltet von Institut für Kunst im Kontext, Universität der Künste Werkbundarchiv – Museum der Dinge

Ethnologica stellen als Exponate in Völkerkundemuseen nicht nur Fragmente einer Kultur dar, sondern sind auch oft Zeitzeugnisse kolonialer Aneignung. In den letzten Jahrzehnten haben zahlreiche Fälle für Aufsehen gesorgt, in denen indigene Volksgruppen ihre Ansprüche auf solche Ausstellungsstücke geltend machen konnten. Viele Artefakte, die ihnen im Zuge des Kolonialismus geraubt wurden und heute als außereuropäische Kunstwerke ausgestellt werden, bezeichnen sie nach wie vor als Heiligtümer.

Doch liegt der Unterschied zwischen Kunstwerken und Heiligtümern wirklich nur im Auge des Betrachters? Dieser Frage gehen der Ausstellungsmacher Christoph Balzar und der Philosoph Hanune Shalati am konkreten Fall der Tairona-Goldarbeiten nach. Diese wurden hauptsächlich im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert vom Gebiet des heutigen Kolumbiens von heiligen Stätten ausgegraben und an westliche Kunstsammlungen verkauft. Für ihre traditionellen Eigentümer, das Volk der Kogi, stellt dies jedoch ein gewaltiges Sakrileg dar, weswegen sie auf die Rückgabe dieser Heiligtümer pochen...



Installationsansicht Museum der Dinge, Museumsbauhütte II