SAPLING #47 — Looking back
Seeing the Africa Museum with new eyes
Recently, the Royal Museum for Central Africa in Brussels re-opened after a major overhaul. A whole new wing was constructed, but more importantly: colonial and white superiority tendencies that had been an undisguised undertone throughout the old exhibition, and had been in dire need of review, were also modified.
(Belgium owned the colony of Congo for over half a century and pratices there were far from gentle. The occupation ended in 1960, leaving the African country independent but in severe turmoil.)
For all its politically sensitive — and with every passing decade ever less appropriate — content, the original museum was a special place, too. A relic. A haven of peace, for there were usually very few visitors. A place to come back to, again and again, and find some sort of shelter.
Now, history is being rewritten, and that is not a bad thing.
But now, in come the masses, too, curious for what has changed. Again, not a bad thing. Perhaps.
There is a charm to looking back, and unexpected elegance.
However nasty the winter wind might blow, smearing its curtains of rain across windows and walls, we needn’t be affected by it. We can look back on warmer times, when we gathered around cozy old ways of thinking.
But what if looking back backfires, eventually?
It is said that the future is all we have left. That we should follow the trends, let go of what has grown old, has become outdated and is no longer in stride with the times.
Perhaps they are right.
But I can’t resist looking back.
Not that life was better back then, or any less cruel. But it was quieter, perhaps. Less crowded. Loneliness is but a word. It mainly leaves more room for a person to think his own thoughts, even if saying them out loud was not allowed.
There is a hidden pleasure to be found in looking back, a truly personal homesickness.
I wander the halls in which, not so long ago, only my own steps resounded. Amidst countless visitors, exuberant like raindrops on a window pane, I wonder whether we will understand the past any better now.
But perhaps the past is there exactly so we could keep looking back, just like the future is there to keep longing for. Shimmering in between both, in this very moment, is a glow that might be light.
The SAPLING series is a joint project with artist and illustrator Jurgen Walschot.
Saplings are creative sprouts. I will write to the images, he will draw to the words.
