Not Rushing the Healing Process
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free admission |
English |
Mechanical Arena in the Foyer |
Part of: Guestroom |
As part of the Gästezimmer series, multidisciplinary artist Samuel Baah Kortey presents early insights and developments from his research project “Not Rushing the Healing Process.”
“Not Rushing the Healing Process” explores the cultural and emotional significance of hair and haircare through the lens of the collections at the Ethnologisches Museum. In dialogue with African-German heritage, it emphasises oral histories and community contributions, aiming to challenge colonial legacies and promote healing through art and storytelling. The project serves as both an educational and discursive tool. Samuel’s project puts the cultural belongings in the museum archive in relation to local communities. In this edition of Gästezimmer, Samuel will share his work experience in Berlin in a conversation with the moderator Anna Schäfers. The audience is invited to participate: if you like, please bring your combs!
Samuel Baah Kortey is CoMuse Fellow at the Ethnologischen Museum and the Museum für Asiatische Kunst.
Participants
Samuel Baah Kortey is a graduate of Hochschule für Bildende Künste–Städelschule in Frankfurt am Main and KNUST – Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in Kumasi, Ghana (Dept. of Painting & Sculpture). He was a 2023 Villa Romana Fellow and lives between Berlin and Kumasi, Ghana. Samuel is a member of the collective blaxTARLINES and a co-founder of the Asafo Black Collective.
Anna Schäfers is Curator Text and Language with the project “The Collaborative Museum” at the Ethnologisches Musuem and the Museum für Asiatische Kunst, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin. Together with Katharina Erben, she develops and co-hosts the projects podcast “Gegen die Gewohnheit” (Going against the grain). Since 2017, Anna has been responsible for editing, translating and producing both museums’ exhibition texts in the Humboldt Forum. Before that she developed science exhibitions and exhibits for Archimedes Exhibitions and also created their content. She studied Comparative Literature, English and German Literature in Bonn, Montpellier, and Berlin.
CoMuse – The Collaborative Museum is an initiative by the Ethnologisches Museum and the Museum für Asiatische Kunst that aims to develop multi-perspective approaches to collection-based research and to test new formats of international collaborative processes in order to intensify the decolonization and diversification of museum practices in sustainable ways.
The CoMuse Fellowship programme is supported by Künstlerhaus Bethanien, which provides a studio for artistic and scientific research.


