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In Belgium, an exhibition looks back on the history of human zoos

2021-11-28T06:23:20.976Z


Until March, the Africa Museum in Tervuren, near Brussels, hosts more than 500 objects and documents retracing the history of human zoos, which persisted until the 1950s in Belgium.


The reconstituted African villages in Europe at the turn of the 20th century were to entertain the public while justifying the supremacy of the colonial empires.

They have also been powerful vectors of racist stereotypes, as an exhibition in Belgium illustrates.

Called "

Human Zoo."

At the time of colonial exhibitions

”, the exhibition is held until the beginning of March at the Africa Museum in Tervuren.

A world-famous institution, the museum is historically linked to this theme since it was born in the precise place where the Belgian sovereign Léopold II had recreated in 1897 three “

Congolese villages

” with their huts with straw roofs, on a property belonging to the Royal family.

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The future Belgian Congo was then the personal property of the king, and 267 women and men had been forcibly brought to be offered as a spectacle, seated in front of their huts, at the Universal Exhibition in Brussels. Seven of these Congolese died from the cold or from an illness. This dramatic episode features prominently in the “

Human Zoo

” exhibition

, which traces, with some 500 objects and documents (writings, posters, photos, etc.) a fashion that all the colonial powers have suffered from all the colonial powers, from the United States. America to Europe via Japan.

It was a question of "

showing off the other as primitive

", of "

making savage

" to "

reinforce the superiority of the whites

", explain the organizers.

Measurements of the size of the skulls were believed to support the so-called "

inferior races

" thesis

.

Exhibition curators estimate that this "

human exhibition industry

" attracted around 1.5 billion visitors between the 16th century and 1960.

"Micro-aggressions"

It draws its roots from the tours of “

monsters

” and other phenomena of unusual physical fair (giants, women with beards, etc.). Phineas Taylor Barnum, an American circus director, made his name in history by making it his specialty in the 19th century. In Europe, “

human zoos

” reached their peak from the 1880s with the new colonial conquests. Exotic decorations give the illusion of visiting real African villages. While in Germany and France (at the Jardin d'Acclimatation in Paris) similar initiatives have already had great success, the first “

negro village

” in Belgium was created in Antwerp in 1885, with 12 Africans.

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Twelve years later, in Tervuren, they are twenty times more numerous, and the colonial section of the World Expo claims more than a million visitors.

In these presentations, "

the same message was repeated thousands of times, and in the end people really thought the African was cannibal, inferior, dirty, lazy,

" Maarten Couttenier, one of the commissioners of the Commission, told AFP. 'exposure.

"

And these stereotypes still exist today, proof that colonial propaganda worked well

", continues this anthropologist.

At the end of the tour, this question of the persistence of clichés about blacks arises in the form of about fifteen sentences reproduced in large characters on a white wall. “

I like blacks too much!

","

Oh! You Did better than I expected

"("

You're better than what I thought

"),"

Ah, it feels strong food from home!

","

The apartment is already rented

".

For Salomé Ysebaert, who imagined this installation for the museum, these seemingly banal and harmless remarks are in reality “

micro-attacks

” for their recipient.

And demonstrate that a form of "

ordinary racism

" is still anchored in people's minds, more than 60 years after the last human zoo shown in Brussels, in 1958.

Source: lefigaro

All life articles on 2021-11-28

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