We invite you to a curatorial tour of the Potential Histories exhibition.

The exhibition’s starting point is the concept of potential history formulated by Ariella Aïsha Azoulay, a scholar of political thought and visual culture, in her book The Potential History: Unlearning Imperialism (2019). The author rejects history as an academic discipline, treating it as a tool of imperial violence and questioning the dominant narratives perpetuated by institutions (borders, nation-states, museums, and archives). Potential history is the reparative tool that she proposes, a strategy for retelling history from a non-Western and decolonial perspective. It reveals the recurring mechanisms of exploitation, but also allows us to address the effects of imperial violence as if it were happening here and now. In practice, the ‘unlearning of imperialism’ called for by Azoulay means writing history based on previously unexplored documents of the past or immaterial sources of knowledge, taking into account the multiplicity of identities and cultures that no longer exist or are currently disintegrating before our eyes. It is therefore a look at the past, but one that is oriented towards the future and the repair of contemporary relations.

Guide: Maria Brewińska, Joanna Kordjak, Katarzyna Kołodziej-Podsiadło