Protektorat by Silvia Rosi at C/O Berlin

In Protektorat, Italian artist Silvia Rosi examines her Togolese roots and highlights systems of communication and signs in colonial and hegemonial structures of power.

Overview

The Italian-Togolese artist Silvia Rosi explores post-colonial themes such as migration, identity and collective memory from a diasporic perspective in an interplay of staged photography, video, performative elements and edited archive material. Her works, which often have autobiographical references, question the constructions of identity and belonging and create a dialogue between past and present.

In Protektorat (2022–2024), Rosi sheds light on the complex history of language under colonial occupation in Togo. Based on archive material from the Togolese National Archives in Lomé, she thematizes the mechanisms of power and resistance that are anchored in colonial language policies. Administered as a German so-called protectorate from 1884 to 1914 and later placed under British-French military administration, the languages German, English and French still shape the West African country today. At the same time, the indigenous languages Ewe and Mina have been preserved through oral tradition despite systematic suppression.

The exhibition presents video works and staged studio shots inspired by the aesthetics of West African studio photography of the 1960s and 1970s as well as archive images that Rosi deliberately alienates in order to question colonial pictorial logics. Textiles play a central role in Rosi‘s artistic practice: wax prints with alphabet patterns refer to colonial influences and at the same time to the history of the Africanizationof such fabrics by Togolese market women (Nana Benz). Some portraits are printed on this very cotton fabric, giving an additional material layer to Rosi‘s exploration of Togo‘s history.

A new, multilingual video installation adds a playful element. In it, four Togolese protagonists play the board game Ludo, similar to the game Mensch ärgere dich nicht, which is familiar in Germany. Originally created during the British colonial period in India, the game serves as a metaphor for the arbitrariness with which the Togolese population had to navigate colonial language policies.

In each round, it is decided at random which language will be spoken – only the person who speaks Ewe remains silent. The suppression of indigenous languages and the absurdity of colonial power relations are thus made tangible in a subtle way.

In Protektorat, Silvia Rosi interweaves postcolonial criticism with personal and playful moments. She questions archives as supposedly neutral places of collective memory and at the same time offers new perspectives on the culture of remembrance in a diasporic context. C/O Berlin presents the artist‘s first solo exhibition in Germany, accompanied by a comprehensive publication.