Sensing Sites: Das Grab als Archiv – Black women and the aesthetics of colonial memory

In the 18th and 19th centuries, Black women came to Germany by various routes: through court networks, colonial ties or so-called ‘human zoos’. Some of them died here and were buried in German soil — often forgotten, rarely remembered. This lecture interprets their graves not merely as places of death, but as archives in which traces of violence, deportation, desire, grief and belonging are concentrated.

The focus is on Black women such as Alzire in Bayreuth, Machbuba in Bad Muskau, Cula in Munich and Jambga in Cologne. Their stories lead to places where African and diasporic presences, colonial power relations and local German history intersect. From a Black feminist perspective, the lecture explores what becomes visible, audible and tangible when cemeteries, gravestones, inscriptions and empty spaces are understood as aesthetic and epistemic sources. The grave thus emerges as a site of Black knowledge production and as a counter-archive to a culture of remembrance that still too rarely recognises Black women as part of German history.

This will be followed by a discursive reading of the text ‘Kula – On Display’ by Modupe Laja, read by Josiane Elodie Siewe.