Book chapters by Michael Barrett
Lisa Rosendahl (Ed.). Biennials as Sites of Historical Narration: Thinking through Göteborg International Biennial for Contemporary Art., 2022
Swedish artist Eric Magassa's Walking with Shadows - an installation at Franska Tomten, commissio... more Swedish artist Eric Magassa's Walking with Shadows - an installation at Franska Tomten, commissioned in 2019 by Gothenburg International Biennial of Contemporary Art - invites the past and the elsewhere in what used to be the maritime heart of Gothenburg. Magassa's intervention follows other scholars and artists of the African Diaspora in employing the shadow as a metaphor for silenced narratives, names and personal stories. In this article, Barrett elucidates and draws upon such a "shadow archive" (Sawyer and Osei-Kofi 2020) in the form of personal biography, photography, and spatial and architectural landmarks, in order to explore the history of the Black Diaspora in Gothenburg and reveal the city's connections to the Atlantic world.
Robert Ross, Marja Hinfelaar and Iva Peša (Eds.), The Objects of Life in Central Africa: The History of Consumption and Social Change, 1840-1960., 2012
In the mid-1930s labour recruitment for Southern Rhodesia and the South African Rand restarted wi... more In the mid-1930s labour recruitment for Southern Rhodesia and the South African Rand restarted with unprecedented vigour in neighbouring territories. Together with new infrastructure, means of transportation and the recently opened recruitment for the Copperbelt, a larger proportion than ever of young men from Barotseland left the area in search of seasonal employment and income. When international labour migration was discontinued by decree two years after Zambian independence in 1964, local expectations of life, work, family relations and material standards had changed radically, new tastes and beliefs had been appropriated. In the emerging small town of Kalabo and its surrounding rural homesteads, the wealth and "luxury goods" migrants brought home from southern Africa's industrial centres affected (and was an indication of changing) gender- and generational relationships, especially as these played out in marriage arrangements. The material culture of the industrial world constituted a focal point in the social and spiritual negotiations between men and women, old and young during these transformations. Migrants' families demanded and were given or denied bicycles, sewing machines, blankets and household utensils brought from urban areas. However, European clothes and accessories were the goods most coveted and admired. They were also the vital props through which migrants, partly by enacting ostentatious homecomings to their villages, signalled the change in their personal status. Based on collected life histories as well as archival sources from Kalabo District, this paper examines the pivotal role of the material in the social struggles brought about by labour migration in the late colonial period.
S. Jansen and S. Löfving (eds.) Struggles for Home: Violence, Hope, and the Movement of People. New York; Oxford: Berghahn Books., 2008
G. Noack & Inés de Castro (Eds.), Creation Labs: Illuminating Guests, Artists and New Voices in European Museums of World Culture. Stuttgart: Sandstein Verlag and Linden-Museum, 2018., 2018
Engaging with the artistic practice of Jacqueline Hoàng Nguyễn, who was artist in residence in 20... more Engaging with the artistic practice of Jacqueline Hoàng Nguyễn, who was artist in residence in 2015 at the Museum of Ethnography in Stockholm, curator Michael Barrett reflects on the current moment of intense reckoning with the colonial past and present in world culture museums throughout Europe. Inspired and challenged by Hoàng Nguyễn's practice, the article approaches the uncomfortable aspects of curatorial decisionmaking: the subjective, the personal, and dealing with the emotional politics of violent and harmful legacies encountered in archival work.
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Book chapters by Michael Barrett