“Abwesende Geschichten und verboten Narrative” is an anticolonial artistic intervention focusing on Goethe's collection of flora and fauna Abwesende Geschichten und verboten Narrative questions the colonial structures that allow for the free movement of nonliving entities as ‘goods’ while criminalising the freedom of human movement by declaring it illegal.
 

In Goethe's house in Weimar, where an archive consisting of ten items from Goethe’s collection of flora and fauna is investigated through a postcolonial lens, to understand their relationship with the narratives of colonisation. The work is supported by a small publication working as an inventory. This intervention emphasizes the expansive nature of European territorial colonisation, where historically during Goethe’s time Germany was not a colonial empire but benefited from the colonial expansion of the other European countries.

“Abwesende Geschichten und verboten Narrative” seeks to recognise that colonialism is not an action from the past but a continual process that affects human society.

Book design by Narendran Nair and  picture credit Devadeep Gupta.