The fragment series is a series of interventions in and out of SAVVY Contemporary’s long term collective archive project on German colonial history. Artists, researchers, activists, and cultural producers are invited to engage with the C O L O N I A L N E I G H B O U R S´ archive, activating and critically contributing to the project.
In the sixth edition of the F R A G M E N T S series, Berlin based artist Lizza May David explores the notion of representation of domestic workers. In her piece »Looking Inwards« (2008), we experience an intimate portrait of the working and living space of a domestic helper (the artist's aunt) in Hong Kong. Filming within the interior of her employer's household including the furniture, view from the window and personal belongings, the video visualizes how power relations are interconnected with private space.
Lizza May David´s work is set in conversation with 3 editions of objects from the Colonial Neighbours archive.
The journal Kolonie und Heimat (1907-1920) was published by the Frauenbund der Deutschen Kolonialgesellschaft (Women’s Association of German Colonial Society), which was one of the most influential organizations of the German empire that campaigned for an expansive colonialist policy. It shows clearly how race and gender constructions were established on different levels and fields of colonial policies: on the example of labor policies, education and moralities, through the discourse of hygiene, purity and health and within the field of ethnology, photography and advertisement.
As the archive project got invited to engage with the Post Heimat ENCOUNTER #4, a conversation between Lizza May David´s intimate portrait of an individual that claims space in the process of writing her own story and the oppressive white narrative that perpetually shape the place of the other.
This constellation invites to reflect on colonial entanglements in regards to how we give space for other bodies´ knowledges that are inscribed IN and ON them.
