DISTANT BODIES
The works are a collage of fabrics from the former Dutch colonies mounted with photographs of naked black women. The images are derived from exotic postcards that were sent from the colonies to Europe in the 19th century. Postcards of the exotic other were extremely popular at the time.
The series refer to Edwards Saïd’s term the “postcolonial gaze”explaining the relationship that colonial powers extended to people of colonized countries. Placing the colonized in a position of the “other” helped to shape and establish the colonial’s identity as being the powerful conqueror, and acted as a constant reminder of this idea.
The postcolonial gaze “has the function of establishing the subject/object relationship. It indicates at its point of emanation the location of the subject, and at its point of contact the location of the object”. In essence, this means that the colonizer/colonized relationship provided the basis for the colonizer’s understanding of themselves and their identity. Covering the naked bodies on the photo’s is meant to disturb the gaze of the viewer. Raising the question of who these women really were by taking away their nakedness, makes the viewer becoming the ‘other’.
photography Tor Jonsson