Decolonial Cultural Front, 2016
Decolonize This Place Action inside the Brooklyn Museum
We are here, in this place, with our friends, families, and communities. This place, the place of the museum, claims to be dedicated to cultural enrichment, public education, and the housing of great works of art, all in the name of the People. Yet this place also exists within an expanded field of capitalism, imperialism, and white supremacy. This place, the Brooklyn Museum, lends itself to these oppressive powers. This place allows itself to become complicit with processes of racist displacement from Crown Heights to the West Bank of occupied Palestine. This place happily facilitates gentrification, sporting a 1% real estate developer on its board even while claiming to serve the very communities being driven from their homes. This place proudly hosts an exhibition that aestheticizes apartheid and settler-colonialism--even while patting itself on the back for displaying works of art produced by the liberation movements of the past century. As artists, as workers, as citizens and noncitizens, we are here in the living spirit of decolonial struggles. We are conjuring the powers of our ancestors to begin decolonizing this place, liberating this place, and returning this place to the People.