Entangled Archives

Abstract

In this essay, I explore the founding violence that the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts can be said to rest on. I propose to view the building of Charlottenborg Castle which houses the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts as a “material witness” (Schuppli) to colonial history. I suggest that the building forms part of a material “cultural archive” (Wekker) of colonialism that can be seen as an entangled archive, that is simultaneously an entanglement of overlapping histories, and an instrument that disentangled and disconnected communities affected by colonialism by producing a radical cut between the colonized communities and their creative expression. By juxtaposing paintings from the colonial era with contemporary art works the essay explores the following questions: What does it mean to conduct art education on such contested grounds? What are the ramifications of colonial-modernity within the art institutions today? And how does it continue (indirectly or directly) to distribute and determine what counts as a work of art and who counts as a subject?