Archival Present: Contemporary Artists at Work With Colonial Archives in European Exhibition Spaces

Debrosse, Clémentine (2026) Archival Present: Contemporary Artists at Work With Colonial Archives in European Exhibition Spaces. Doctoral thesis, University of East Anglia.

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Abstract

This thesis examines the practice of a range of contemporary Indigenous, diasporic and Global South artists who work with colonial archives to make archival art in museums and galleries in Europe. Informed by the context of conceptual art in the 1960s, the decolonial turn in the 1980s, and the archival turn in the 1990s, archival art is presented as a practice of collage, assemblage and re-assemblage, enabled by the digital and the new openness of museum archives, together with a renewed interest in photography, at the turn of the 21st century. Through a close study of the works of Carrie Mae Weems, Sasha Huber, Kiri Dalena and Rajkamal Kahlon, archival practice is presented as enabling forms of repair and redress thanks to the reworking of colonial archives. Central to this study are works by Brook Andrew and George Nuku which are read through concepts of archival alterations and museum adaptation as a means to create personal retellings of history as well as to engage in a critique of the museum institution and its practices. By looking at the residency of the Centre for the Less Good Idea at the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain in Paris, this thesis considers working with and displaying archives outside of their original institutions, in the space of the buffer zone, as a form of freeing. Overall, this thesis considers archival art as a method for the dissemination of colonial archives outside of their storage spaces (analogue or digital) by means of their exhibition, offering new meanings to the archives and chances of encounter and experience by the public.

Item Type:	Thesis (Doctoral)
Faculty \ School:	Faculty of Arts and Humanities > School of History
Depositing User:	Chris White
Date Deposited:	09 Jun 2026 08:11
Last Modified:	09 Jun 2026 08:15
URI:	https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/103328
DOI:

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