Open your eyes: destruction, colonialism and the primitive in the museum

Abstract

Based on the installation “Open your eyes” by artist Kader Attia, this paper seeks to understand the connections between Attia’s work and the curatorship of the exhibition Picasso Primitif. Presented during the same time at the Quai Branly Museum, in Paris, they both can help us draw a notional itinerary encompassing the concept of primitive, the idea of reparation, the appropriation of ethnographic artifacts by the visual arts system, and the manipulation of historic images. To that end, a small set of exhibitions, curatorships and critical interpretations were selected to build a possible history of art. Thus, by the presence in the same museological space, we present a narrative that combines artistic and cultural productions whose intentions belong to different temporalities.