Page 174 - Katalog Beyond the Box 820 final.indd

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time, art historians like Robert Goldwater are convinced that Pi- ceramics, and he says he caught the bug from him . These familial
casso derived the idea for it from African sculptures in religious treasures already interested Dohmen in his youth, initially because
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contexts, and merely claimed it as his own. This shows that even of their beauty and historical value, later because of their political
in the highest circles of Western art history there are invisible or dimension: „What a sensation an ancient shard can cause when it
erased authors from the global South behind supposed solo ge- is declared a cultural heritage...“. 6
niuses from the global North. Even today, the very cultures from
whose visual worlds representatives of modern art were already Together with Jan Hoet (1936-2014), Dohmen discussed and cu-
serving themselves a century ago are often referred to as ‚source rated the contemporaneity of these and similar antiques over the
communities‘ in the post-colonial debate, as if they were nothing years, most recently in the museum exhibition ‚MARTa schweigt‘
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more than wells for the West and its insatiable thirst for images. (‚MARTa is silent‘). Central to this exhibition of contemporary art
This naturalising approach is colonial in the sense that it only pre- works was a half-opened Etruscan sarcophagus. Dohmen concerns
sents these cultures and their arts as resources, while ignoring their himself with the interface between religious and artistic pictorial
autonomy. works as well as the change in register that occurs through shifts
No wonder, then, when one is tired of Eurocentric art. Werner in context, as for example that from a church to the white cube.
Dohmen says he is. As a founding member of the Aachener Kunst- „Everything was once contemporary and can be so again.“ Today
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verein and the Twodo Collection , he has over decades assembled Dohmen also supports the shamanistic museum Pacha Milli in
a polyphonic collection of contemporary artworks and cultural ar- Colombia, which is committed to the restitution of pre-Columbi-
tifacts. Transnational ties between cultures and ‚entangled histo- an ceremonial ceramics . There, sacred relics from indigenous cul-
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ries‘ became preferences of his taste in art. But so did questions of tures are recontextualised from private art collections and made
positioning, contextualisation and the narrowness of the Western available again to their religious communities. Dohmen‘s collection
gaze. As a collector, he says, you have to overcome the boundaries grows along such post-colonial projects and positions.
in your head. In this respect, he is of the family tradition. His great-
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grandfather Benedikt Schienle already collected, namely Etruscan

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