Necessary Labour(s): Doing the Work of Undoing

Abstract

Necessary Labour(s): Doing the work of undoing, plenary session with Salad Hilowle, Katarina Pirak Sikku and Temi Odumosu, recorded on November 18th, 2021 as a part of the PARSE 4th biennial research conference on Violence. Sweden’s colonial archives are sites of documented histories with unacknowledged narratives of violence. The repository of photographs and documents require radical re-examination through decolonial perspectives to make visible those memories and experiences that have been occluded, or to offer reparative possibilities. Katarina Pirak Sikku’s research in the State Institute for Racial Biology archive at Uppsala University is revealed in careful gestures honours Sami ancestors and family members. Salad Hilowle’s production of Vanus Labor (2021), an installation and short film featured in GIBCA 2021, intercepts the colonial gaze by revisiting the production of European Art history and its reproduction of African subjects. The plenary addresses how these two artists have strategically worked at undoing the colonial archive through decolonial labour. By using artistic methods with archival material and subverting their status as official records in national (and international) discourse – these artistic practices are necessary interventions to the singularity of colonial histories that make possible acts of remembrance in histories otherwise not seen.⁠ With an introduction by Jyoti Mistry.

Keywords

• pirak sikku
• salad hilowle
• jyoti mistry
• temi odumosu
• katarina pirak
• necessary labour