Sometimes It Was Beautiful
The video work is an example of how to use speculation to reflect on and critique repatriation and the role of the museum. The fact that they used prominent figures to represent to represent different perspectives is a great tool.
film by artist Christian Nyampeta, about a meeting between improbable friends, gathered to watch I fetischmannens spår (In the Footsteps of the Witch Doctor), one of the six Swedish films cinematographer Sven Nykvist made in or about Congo between 1948 and 1952. The friends include politician Yasser Arafat, postcolonial theorist Leela Gandhi, human rights activist Rigoberta Menchú, politician Robert Mugabe, playwright Wole Soyinka, and Crown Princess Victoria of Sweden. They share interests and concerns, participate in group discussions and activities, and visit new places, such as the Stockholm’s Museum of Ethnography.