Hvid[mə] Archive

Abstract

This essay describes how the artistic research project Hvid[mə] Archive started as a critical comment on the Danish Royal Cast Collection’s exhibition in the colonial West Indian Warehouse at the harbour front in Copenhagen. The essay situates the project as a response to the lack of verbalization about the warehouse’s colonial past, as well as to the lack of a verbalization about the context and history that the plaster cast collection is a product of. Furthermore, the essay clarifies the use and re-conceptualization of the Danish noun hvidme, and how it created an entry point for a contemporary critical whiteness discourse in a specific Danish art context. The essay also describes how the project developed into the artistic research project and collaboration that it is today. A decolonial and intersectional artist collaboration, that seeks to facilitate exhibitions, encourage artistic workshops and networks, host events with visual artists, cultural producers, writers and theorists working within a decolonial and critical frame. The essay showcases some of our defining activities, as well as aspects of our working methods, practices, reflections, doubts and questions for further discussions.