Un-Veiling Objects
This article studies contemporary artist Jimmie Durham’s museum-style installations and, examining his reflections, offers an analysis of the mechanisms devised in order to exhibit the « normality », or the common point of view in understanding objects, which the artist has noticed among his public, that of Western museums. Durham presents ordinary objects or stereotypied artefacts in glass cases with labels. These installations are produced specifically for their public, who is invited to engage with the works. He reveals the « normality », in particular through humorous shifts, and makes it enter into the museum by exhibiting artefacts which are not usually found in it. Durham unveils this hidden point of view’s, which has oppressive implications, in colonial contexts in particular, and tries, through investigations, to provoke the beholder’s reflexivity with the aim to open new possibilities to include other points of view on selves and others.