Δ MOROCCO MAGIC - Modern Ceramics

Green Room, Weltkulturen Labor, Schaumainkai 37

In March 2012, artist and curator Shane Munro travelled to Morocco on behalf of the Weltkulturen Museum. There he commissioned the workshop 'Morocco Magic' in Salé to produce a series of ceramics based on inventory cards from the archives of the Museum. These cards, which date back to the turn of the last century, feature watercolours of Moroccan objects that were subsequently destroyed in World War II. These new artworks are ‘ethnographic restorations’. The potters from ‘Morocco Magic’ have translated the original 2D drawings into 3D objects, resembling a children’s pop-up version of the archival cards. 

In the Green Room, these ceramics are exhibited alongside a new set of museum inventory cards painted by Shane Munro. Here Munro represents the plates currently on sale at Morocco Magic’s shop in Salé. His ‘inventory cards’ feature the object with its price tag. No further information is provided. The watercolours are framed and mounted onto 'green screen' hand-woven cactus silk, purchased in Rabat, Morocco.

The installation in the Green Room includes furniture kindly provided by Frank Landau. The ceramics are presented in a ‘Süschala Vitrine’ from Zuffenhausen, Stuttgart, and on glass and brass side-tables from the 1960s.

Works by Simon Popper, based on other museum inventory cards of objects destroyed in World War II, are currently on display in the Weltkulturen Museum’s main exhibition ‘Object Atlas – Fieldwork in the Museum’.

The ceramics in the exhibition were crafted by Abdelkabir Bariss (potter)and Abdenabi Bellaj (decorator). The production was supervised by Ahmed Benmostapha (workshop owner) at Morocco Magic, Salé, Morocco.

Special thanks go to Dr. Muneera Salem-Murdock (Country Director, MCC, Morocco), for facilitating Shane Munro’s research in Morocco. We would like to thank Frank Landau, Frankfurt (franklandau.com), for lending the Museum designer furniture for the exhibition.

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Δ OBJECT ATLAS – Fieldwork in the Museum

This exhibition presents objects from the Museum’s collections plus new works produced by seven international artists who undertook fieldwork in the Museum during 2011.

Paintings, films, and three dimensional installations by Thomas Bayrle (D), Marc Camille Chaimowicz (UK/F), Antje Majewski (D), Otobong Nkanga (Nigeria), and Simon Popper (UK) are installed in close proximity to objects from Papua New Guinea, Samoa, the Solomon Islands, Indonesia, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Ghana, Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Venezuela, Brazil and Peru. Helke Bayrle (D) and Sunah Choi (Korea) show a film shot in the Museum’s stores that investigates the figurative detail on over one hundred ethnographic artefacts. Historical drawings and photographs of phallic posts made by Alf Bayrle (Thomas Bayrle’s father) on an expedition to Ethiopia in 1934 are exhibited for the first time together with the original funerary steles acquired by the Museum at the same time.

A reading room with archival material from the seminal Frankfurt Qumran Verlag for anthropology and art, plus catalogues and reference books extends the vistors’ own experience of fieldwork in the museum.

The participating artists are present.

The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue in German and English with unpublished essays by Richard Sennett, Paul Rabinow and the late Hubert Fichte, discussions between Lothar Baumgarten and Michael Oppitz, texts by Clémentine Deliss, Hans-Jürgen Heinrichs, Richard Kuba, Eva Ch. Raabe, Mona Suhrbier, Vanessa von Gliszczynski as well as interviews with the artists who took part in the exhibition. Plus numerous facsimiles of anthropological texts and newspaper cuttings. 500 pages, 250 colour illustrations/photographs, Kerber Verlag, €28.

Weltkulturen Museum, Schaumainkai 29, 60594 Frankfurt am Main

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