Between June 20-21, 2024, I participated in the “Atlas of Absence : New Coordinates” a workshop of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) project “Reverse Collection Histories. Art and Culture from Cameroon in German Museums” at the Teknische Universität in Berlin, Germany. After accepting the invitation sent by Professor Benedicte Savoy, the brainstorming period was a transformative one. I tested many concepts in association with the idea of “restitution” and “repatriation” : “immaterial return”, “intangible restitution”, “community-centered repatriation” etc. But, none seemed to accurately capture the argument that was forming in my mind. That argument had to do with the whole concept of “material cultures”, of “objects”, of “artifacts”, or of “masterpieces’ ‘ that circulate in the museum documentations. These keywords reduce African heritage cultures to a single dimension: their material aspects. (Read more…)