During 1884/85 the Ethnologisches Museum acquired a stock of textiles and objects from the Ryūkyū Islands (the present day Okinawa Prefecture, and part of Japan). Like all collections from comparable museums, this one too needs to deal with the imperialist politics of its nascence in a critical manner. At the same time, presentations of the objects need to reflect issues from the current discourse that is taking place in the regions of origin. The project “Yuken Teruya: On Okinawa” set out to discover what role artists from the objects’ cultures of origin could play in this process of negotiation. How can the Eurocentric museum-like presentation be shaken up? An answer was provided by the Okinawan artist Yuken Teruya, with his installation. On invitation from the Humboldt Lab Dahlem, he presented a subjective selection of objects from the historical collection, supplementing them with the most varied artifacts from every day culture, combined with contemporary artistic positions.

You can find a detailed description of the project here.