Sasha Huber Saarikko

(T)race-ing Louis Agassiz  Artistic Renegotiations of Archive, Memory and Place

Beginn des PhD-Programms / Start of the PhD-Program:
WS 2017 Betreuung / Supervision:
Florian Dombois (ZHdK)
Anette Baldauf (Akademie der bildenden Künste) This practice-based PhD project has evolved out of the artistic engagement with the cultural anti-racist activist campaign Demounting Louis Agassiz, whose aim has been to advocate for the renaming of Agassizhorn in the Swiss Alps to Rentyhorn, in honor of the Congolese-born enslaved man Renty and of those who met similar fates. Louis Agassiz (1807–1873) is celebrated in the history of science as an important glaciologist who was one of the discoverers of ice age theory. But, he also was one of the most influential proponents of 'scientific racism’ in his adoptive country, the United States of America from 1846. Agassiz studied and photographed enslaved Africans in the places of their suffering and argued that they were innately inferior. He advocated strict racial segregation, ethnic cleansing, and government measures to prevent the birth of interracial children whom he considered unnatural. Kurz-Biographie / Short Bio:
Sasha Huber is a visual artist and researcher of Swiss-Haitian heritage, born in Zurich in 1975. She lives and works in Helsinki. Huber's work is primarily concerned with the politics of memory and belonging, particularly in relation to colonial residue left in different landscapes. Sensitive to the subtle threads connecting history and the present, she works with and responds to archival material within a layered creative practice that encompasses video, photography, performance-based interventions and collaborations. Presently Huber is undertaking practice-based PhD studies at the Department of Art and Media at the Zurich University of the Arts / University of Arts Linz. Email-Adresse / Email-Address:
sasha@sashahuber.com Weblink:
www.sashahuber.com