Cotton textile (sheer); linoleum block print; photo transfer; glass mirror, gold thread, 2023.
“To challenge the regimes of representation that govern a society is to conceive of how a politics can transform reality. As this creative struggle moves onward, it is bound to recompose subjectivity and praxis. More often than not, it requires that one leave the realms of the known, and take oneself there where one does not expect, is not expected to be.”
- Trinh T. Minh-Ha, When the Moon Waxes Red
The original 1870 caricature of French colonial soldiers printed by P. Decker reads:
„Machen die! Die Zivilisation! Sie wollen kommen.“
(”Are they making civilization? They want to come.”)
„Machen die! Die Zivilisation! Sie wollen kommen.“
(”Are they making civilization? They want to come.”)
The image is reworked on textile with gold embroidery and text to reconfigure colonial propaganda into a critique of Orientalism, Christianity, and empire.
Across from the work, a mirror reflects the piece to the viewer. At its base, faintly inked, is the phrase Sie Wollen Kommen (They Want To Come) from the 1870 caricature. The reflection collapses the image, caption, and audience into one frame. It turns the underlying mechanics of propaganda and historical impact into a phantasmagoria that draws the audience to confront their place in its history today.
"Ein Heirathsbureau für Turcos" (A Marriage Bureau for Turcos). German satirical cartoon or leaflet (Flugblatt 14) from the Franco-Prussian War era (1870–1871). Cologne Newspaper, 26 February 1911. Bourgeois women visited makeshift camps with French colonial soldiers. They brought food, clothing, or comfort. Rumors and satire through the printed press published inflammatory stories about French and German women fraternizing with colonial soldiers. The contact between German women and the soldiers drew outrage. Mixed-race children from these relationships were referred to as “Rheinlandbastarde (”Rhineland Bastard).