| Graphic | Dresden
VERMISST IN BENIN
Graphic design for
Vermisst in Benin (Missing in Benin)
“Vermisst in Benin” is the project by Berlin based Nigerian artist Emeka Ogaboh & the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden.
“Vermisst in Benin” is an artistic intervention that seeks to accelerate and actualize the narrative around the reparation of the Benin artefacts currently in possession of the Museum für Völkerkunde Dresden. The reparation dialogue to date has been ineffective in returning the artefacts to their original home of Benin, Nigeria. I created the “Vermisst in Benin” intervention out of a sense of impatience and necessity, aiming to frame the stagnant and abstract discourse surrounding colonial reparations with the urgency and gravity of a public service announcement.
– Emeka Ogboh
Artist
“For more than a year, we as museum have been in contact with the Nigerian Embassy in Berlin to discuss possible steps. The embassy has put us in contact with Emeka Ogboh. We are delighted to have brought this internationally famous artist on board to devise and carry out an artistic intervention in urban Dresden. We are grateful that the artist raises this awareness amongst all of us, including the museums and Dresden’s urban community, with his action and for naming so clearly what is at stake with these objects.”
– Léontine Meijer-van Mensch
Director of the ethnological museums in Leipzig, Dresden and Herrnhut.
Photos: © SKD, Photographer: Oliver Killig
