Impossible Portraits of Gutta

In 1892, a group of so-called “Dahomey Amazons” came to Prague to demonstrate the ways of African everyday village life to a local audience on Střelecký Island. A young woman called Gutta was part of the group. She died a few weeks later and her burial at the Olšany Cemetery became an international “media sensation.” Two years after the funeral, Gutta’s remains were exhumed and placed in the university collection, which later became the Hrdlička Museum of Man in Prague. Her remains are still on display here today. In his essay ‘Impossible Portraits of Gutta,’ Polish artist Ludomir Franczak searches for the forgotten story of the Yoruba woman and asks how to refer to the Central European colonial past and the violence perpetrated against its so-called Others. How to ethically represent those who were exhibited in the “ethnographic shows” of the era without merely re-capitalizing on their image in a different context? Through artistic research, Franczak tries to find creative strategies to responsibly share the stories of those neglected by the dominant view of European history.