The archive as construction site: collective memory and trauma in contemporary art from Angola

Abstract

History has become a challenging and demanding space for contemporary artists from the former peripheries of the global art world interested in the documentary, (re)constructive and also fictional dimensions of the archive – in both its physical and metaphorical dimension. The notions of memory and trauma (as absence of memory) are closely related and interrelated to the topic of the archive, especially in regard to the collective or cultural dimension of the archive. In the discussion of some selected artworks of Angolan contemporary artists, the archive is understood from a cultural-historical perspective as part of the collective and cultural memory. The interdependency between memory and forgetting is the focus of this paper. I ask how the artworks address the presence and the absence of collective memory in the archive, showing the different positions in a range of possible engagements with the archive. In the analysis I lean on a set of notions of practices such as excavation, autopsy and performance – used in a metaphorical sense to describe and interpret the artworks, asking how memory and forgetting is made visible.