Sithabile Mlotshwa

  Citizens in colonizing countries like the Netherlands often ignore the darkness at the heart of their history. Exploitation and oppression sound too civilised to express the plunder, enslavement, rape and murder perpetrated by Dutch ‘entrepreneurs’, ‘administrators’ and ‘settlers’ at a massive scale for centuries on end. Perhaps, if this all truly belonged to the past, people might be excused to look away. But racism, systemic injustice and capitalist exploitation continue to this day. Zimbabwean artist and curator Sithabile Mlotshwa researches and visually maps Dutch and wider European colonial projects and their atrocities. At EKWC she started work on a ceramic installation that captures the entire Dutch colonial history in a large mosaic that will take years to complete. Wide-ranging references to African cultures, powerful collages of historical images, gold and silver coins come together in a visual and tactile tableau exposing the insatiable greed that drives it all.