Humbodt Lab Tanzania

About the Project

In 2016-2017, I took part in a multi-disciplinary project, Humbodt Lab Tanzania, looking into issues surrounding the artifacts taken from the Southern Tanzania during German colonial time that are now part of the museum collections in Ethnology Museum Berlin. The project resulted in publication of a book, Humbodt Lab Tanzania: Object from Colonial Wars in the Ethnologisches Museum, Berlin—A Tanzania-German Dialogue, which can be found on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Humboldt-Lab-Tanzania-Ethnologisches-Tanzanian-German/dp/3496015918

Another aspect of the project was an exhibition, Living Inside the Story, that took place at the National Museum of Tanzania, the University of Dar es Salaam, Maji Maji Memorial Museum before travelling to Berlin.


"Humbodt Lab Tanzania has concentrated on objects that were obtained during contacts of manifest violence ie as war on the maji Maji war and from the other larger military comfort."

lili Reyels, paola ivanov, kristin weber-sinn, foreword


"We were to be dealing with a set of objects that were well over 100 years old since their last intended usage and significantly, these objects were no longer in Tanzania but thousands of miles away in the bowels of State Museums Berlin's Ethnologisches Museum and until only recently "rediscovered""

"Within the framework of this project, we were asking artists to consider the roles as practitioners and contemplate how they would convey their perspectives regarding the legacies of German colonialism using these ethnographic object as the starting point."

"This scope of Humbodt Lab Tanzania created in matrix of academic research and artistic enquiry with the objects forming the starting point."

Sarita Lydia Mamseri, Art and (Re)presentation