As Europe contends with how it will be constituted in the future, a recurring challenge has been how Europe engages, in this instance particularly in relation to Africa, in processes of reparation in the aftermath of colonial histories that shape the present.
This has been prominent in the conversations around museums and restitution, especially after the Sarr-Savoy report of 2018 on African art and belongings in European cultural institutions. I propose in this discussion a consideration of restitution that reckons with the kinds of inconvenient demands, not just for the return of material culture, but for a planetary reorientation when restitution is considered as shared process and labour, rather than primarily a question of return. In this sense then, I ask whether cultural restitution can be considered a necessary, if insufficient, part of reshaping the (colonial) foundations on which European identity and power have been built, and in a rapidly shifting world, whether restitution is an opportunity to rebuild different relations, and steer global cultural (and consequently socio-economic and political) relations in a different direction. In the face of contemporary transatlantic relations, it is also important to consider what this conception of restitution might offer in the current Africa-Canada-Europe nexus, if anything.
This talk is part of the CES Spring 2026 Colloquium Series. The series features UBC CES affiliate faculty currently working on issues related to Europe and the languages spoken there.
This event is hybrid. Those who wish to attend online can register for the Zoom link below.
Bio
Dr. Lennon Mhishi’s work, animated by African life-worlds, thinks across museums and colonial collections, migration and diaspora as well as contemporary art practice, as part of broader practices of engaging questions of mobility, creative practice and the afterlives of slavery and colonialism- as well as the shared struggles for building other knowledges and ways of relating-being in the world
