‖ 𝗳𝗿𝗲𝗲 𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗿𝘆
‖ 𝗱𝘂𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻: 𝟱𝟬 𝗺𝗶𝗻.
‖ 𝗹𝗮𝗻𝗴𝘂𝗮𝗴𝗲: 𝗘𝗻𝗴𝗹𝗶𝘀𝗵

Who is Gutta?
From whose perspective is her story told?

Who is watching?
Who is exposed to watch?
Who has the right to decide about it?

To whom do the bones in the museum display case belong?
What becomes the museum object we are looking at?
Who decides about it?

What is the relationship between the person looking and the object in the museum?

Is looking “innocent”?
Is looking “objective”?
Who has the right to decide about it?

Who decides about it?

The performance / lecture / audio session / installation is an attempt to open the discussion, or perhaps to continue it. It is a speaking out on an issue related to Central Europe’s colonial past. It is a symbolic performative work attempting to tell a story about which little is known.

Idea, text, stage design and performance by Ludomir Franczak
with the appearance and text of Sára Märc in the Czech version
Music by Marcin Dymiter

“Gutta” is a multi-layered project centered on the person of “Amazon Gutta”, a woman from the Yoruba people, performing with a group of “Amazons of Dahomey”, which in September 1892, arrived in Prague. Gutta contracted typhoid fever here, and died after a few days. Her solemn funeral was a big spectacle, which took place on September 21, 1892 and was widely reported by press around the world. She was buried then in the Olšany cemetery. Two years later, her remains were excavated by Jindřich Matiegka and placed in the university collection, from where they found their way to the Hrdlicka Museum of Man, where they remain to this day.

The work is a part of a bigger project presented in the form of a performance, a sound walk in Prague space, an essay and a audio-visual intervention in the museum space of Hrdlicka Museum of Man. Crumbs of the project also appear in the works of researchers and scientific presentations prepared for the following years.

Project team:
Zuzanna Berendt, Petr Dlouhý, Marcin Dymiter, Ludomir Franczak, Agáta Hrnčířová, Anna Majewska, Sára Märc, Ida Ślęzak

With the help of:
Sára Arnstein, Johanna Berg, Dominika Czarnecka, Filip Herza, Ewan McLaren, Margaret Amaka Ohia-Nowak, Clemens Radauer, Tim Sandweg, Louise Steinman

Partners:
Cross Attic/Praha, Studio ALTA/Praha, Pracownia Kuratorska/Cracow, Bazaar/Praha, Labyrinth Gallery/Lublin, Schaubude/Berlin

Project created within the VARP PA program financed by Visegrad Fund