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  • Andrea Fraser

White People in West Africa

1989/1991/1993
Installation of 82 photographs and 3 texts
6.3 inch x 9.45 inch
erworben | acquired in 2005
Inventory number: G 1139/0

Andrea Fraser’s institutional critique of the art business is interspersed with excursions into broader social contexts. In eighty-two photographs made between 1989 and 1991 in West Africa, she reflects upon the role of white tourists — herself included. Reminiscent of a filmstrip, the photographs are hung next to one another in a precise row. The thirty-meter sequence of images snakes around the corners and wall protrusions in the exhibition space. Along with their descriptive titles, the photographs shift between sociological “field research” and vacation snapshots, analyzing the multiple impacts of colonialism and neocolonialism. Fraser uses both found image material and her own photography. She describes the project as an attempt “to resist the compelling force of historical narratives and their reproduction within contemporary relations of cultural and economic exchange.”