In 2019, a box from the colonial «Medical-Demographic German New Guinea Expedition», in which Emil Nolde took part, was found in the MARKK archive. In these newly discovered, not yet archived pictures, Emil Nolde can be seen wearing a colonial helmet, as the colonial officials did. From my point of view, he thus casts light and shadows of the past into our time.

But have we ever asked ourselves what it meant to wear a colonial helmet back then? Nolde, after all, lived at a time when racial theories formed a legal and intellectual basis for the problems and institutional violence in which many migrants lived. Nolde is depicted in the photograph wearing a colonial helmet, a characteristic element of the colonial masters in the former colonies, a symbol of power, a symbol of racial difference and ethnic superiority.

This observation is not new, as a contemporary of Nolde, a Nigerian artist named Thomas Ona Odulate, who lived in Nigeria and also experienced the British occupation, used the sculpting techniques of the region to portray Europeans in wooden sculptures as well as their clothing and accessories.This observation is not new, as a contemporary of Nolde, a Nigerian artist named Thomas Ona Odulate, who lived in Nigeria and also experienced the British occupation, used the sculpting techniques of the region to portray Europeans in wooden sculptures as well as their clothing and accessories.
The Installation was part of the Fluctoplasma Festival in the «Zwischenraum» of the MARKK Museum.