(Don’t) Look At Me! – Schwarze Körper in der Fotografie

In the organizer's words:

Dr. Christopher A. Nixon and Rebecca Racine Ramershoven are guests at STADT_RAUM in the MKK for a table talk. The philosopher and curator and the artist and photographer will talk about Black bodies in photography, which - whether in front of or behind the camera - they address from a theoretical perspective and in curatorial and artistic practice. Visitors are cordially invited to sit down at the table with tea and cookies and expand the conversation with their own questions on beer mats. At the end, all guests will draw attention to the message of the postcard project "(Don't) Look At Me!" in a joint mailing campaign.

The works of Black artists, which could show experiences and perspectives that are little recognized by society, are underrepresented in museums. Visitors also often see representations by others that reinforce discriminatory attributions. The project "(Don't) Look At Me!", initiated by Dr. Christopher A. Nixon, draws attention to this situation by distributing postcards with photographic works by Black artists and opening up new narrative spaces.

Two postcards with works by Rebecca Racine Ramershoven kick off the project. The photographs "scrunchie" (2021) and "Elena II" (2021) from the series "flow" (since 2024) refer to empty spaces in museum collections and the (im)possibility for Black people to escape the "white gaze".

Dr. Christopher A. Nixon is a philosopher and comparatist, most recently held the professorship for Social Inequality and Social Policy at the RheinMain University of Applied Sciences and works as a freelance curator and consultant for museums. He is currently co-curating an exhibition on US photographer Paul Mpagi Sepuya with the Fotomuseum Winterthur and the Sprengel Museum Hannover and is working on his research project "Critical Future Philosophy" as a guest researcher at the Zurich University of the Arts. His work focuses on aesthetics, postcolonial, critical and political theory, social philosophy and visual studies.

Rebecca Racine Ramershoven studied photography at the Folkwang University of the Arts in Essen. In 2024 she received the prestigious Villa Aurora Scholarship from KunstSalon and in 2022 the "Contemporary German Photography" scholarship from the Alfried Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach Foundation. In her work, she uses photography, moving images and objects to address questions of race-related representation and socio-cultural issues. She can currently be seen with the series BLACK is BLUE is GOLD in the exhibition "Photography Masters" at the Museum Folkwang.