In January 2019, I undertook a research project in London, inspired by curator and art historian Okwui Enwezor’s (1963-2019) 2003 essay “The Postcolonial Constellation: Contemporary Art In a State of Permanent Transition”. In this essay, Enwezor discusses the opening of the Tate Modern in London in 2000, and states that "...globalization and cultural assimilation are operative in the art world…”. 

Though Enwezor dealt directly with art and the Tate Modern in his essay, my research encompasses the British Museum for its influence as a lauded historical institution which displays art, natural, and cultural objects, and its problematic history in cultural display. My research consisted of examining the current presentations of non-Western art and cultural objects in the Tate Modern and British Museum in an attempt to understand what colonial roots  are still visible and operative in these influential museums nearly twenty years after Enwezor’s essay was written.

The goal of this piece is to look to epistemologies and philosophies such as Afrocentric and Indigenous Feminisms in order to build a frame of possibility for more decolonized (which may lead to what I believe are more ethical) methods of display within art and encyclopedic museum institutions.