Why Exhibit Trauma?

Abstract: This article takes seriously the artistic, intellectual, literary, and curatorial approaches to curation that frame, display, and make meaning out of what is unrepresentable, such as the empty pedestal on which had sat a colonial and/or Confederate monument. By momentarily stepping away from the traditional role of museums to preserve and protect art objects, the article points out the ways exhibitions can produce and affect moods and emotions. If traditionally, museums can account for ownership and custodianship, can an account, therefore, of exhibitions consider spiritual, emotional, or psychic phenomena? In a post-conflict setting such as South Africa, exhibitions like the 2nd Johannesburg Biennale, which centred works about traumatic events like genocide in Rwanda and violent subjugation under apartheid in South Africa, led inevitably to privatisation and art market expansion. The article points to curator Okwui Enwezor’s interest in Africa and Asia.