Making Sites of Reciprocity and Rematriation

Eeva-Kristiina Harlin and Marian Pastor Roces’ practices involve communal healing and peace-building processes. They consider the politics of indigeneity and forms of kinship that challenge dominant power relations around cultural representation. This conversation delves into how museological work might build sensorial vocabularies, reciprocity and collective belonging.

This panel looks at practices of healing and peace-building by bringing together Eeva-Kristiina Harlin and Marian Pastor Roces in conversation with the Gropius Bau’s Associate Curator Natasha Ginwala. Harlin has studied the many meanings of Sámi objects, duodji, stored in museum collections across Europe. As part of her interest in their ancestral relations and the intimacies of cultural language, she presents the “ rematriation“ project, The Ládjogahpir. Máttaráhkuid gábagahpir. The Foremothers’ Hat of Pride conceived in collaboration with Sámi visual artist Outi Pieski. One of Roces’ projects, The Museum of Cross-Cultural Understanding, is centred on communal practices and is located on the island of Basilan in the southern Philippines. Emerging from decades of violent ethnic and religious conflict, Basilan’s natural and urban environments require rebalancing. Roces vests hope in constructing equilibrium through science-driven imagination.

Eeva-Kristiina Harlin is an archeologist pursuing doctoral research at the University of Oulu, Giellagas Institute for Saami Studies in Finland. She works with Sámi cultural heritage and repatriation processes together with the Sámi society. She is currently co-developing an exhibition at the Sámi Museum Siida in Inari, Finland.

Marian Pastor Roces is an independent curator and critic working across subjects including contemporary art, museums, the politics of identity, clothing and related sign systems, and the failures of the democratic project in many parts of the world. 

Natasha Ginwala (moderator) is a curator, writer and editor. She is the artistic director of COLOMBOSCOPE, Colombo, Sri Lanka and an Associate Curator at the Gropius Bau. She was the artistic director of the 13th Gwangju Biennale with Defne Ayas.