Sara Blokland. research summery
Re-imagining Colonial Narratives of Trauma Through the (Post)colonial Museum Concept and Photographic Production of (A)lif/ve-Size Figures
When human presence is replicated in the form of life-size figures, it signifies profound cultural and political views about gender, race, and identity and, in the case of colonialism, a deeply violent narrative. These figures in museums depicting colonial history and representing human presence are often based on photographs and/or human (life) casts, which are frequently overlooked by their audiences as mere set pieces. However, they play a significant role in perpetuatin problematic contextualizations and masking violent colonial narratives.
This PhD project explores the life-size figures in museums depicting colonial history, aiming to shed light on the violence they “endured”, both theoretically and physically, by asking: What insights do life-size figures, when considered ‘(A)lif/ve’ (alive and with a life), provide about embodied trauma and colonial violence when viewed through different photographic perspectives, and examined across different phases of their “lives”from their conceptualization and production to their exhibitions and their physical ‘afterlives’?
The research focuses on three key areas: colonial museum politics, archives, and the physical "body" of the (A)lif/ve-size figure. Photography and photo archives serve as key resources for understanding (A)lif/ve-size figures and documenting their production, display, and preservation. Photographs are also approached as part of their personal life file, helping to understand them as emotional, physical, and historical subjectsrevealing social interactions, displacement, and the physical memories embedded in the (A)lif/ve figures.
Inspired by Ariella Azoulay's thoughts on the relation between photography and violence and Homi K. Bhabha's ideas about the transmission of barbarism through various knowledge systems, among others, this project reframes (A)lif/ve-size figures not as mere objects of a traumatic past but as living subjects that continuously embody, endure, and transmit the discourse of colonial violence.
Through (visual) methodologies such as archival activation, forensic anthropology, and critical ethnography, this research project repositions photography as the central tool for reflection, documentation, and memory. This provides input for a disruptive narrative best described as radical fiction, with a strong re-imaginative approach inspired by the concept of ‘critical fabulation’ as coined by writer Sayida Hartman, which combines historical research with critical theory and fictional narratives. The life of the (A)lif/ve-size figure is voiced, animated, and reconstructed through this reimagined existence that reflects and witnesses a dispersed reality of violence.
research follow-up 24 11 2025
Artistic research
In this project, artistic research is a method of inquiry as well as a form of knowledge production to generate insight into the life-size figures, their histories, material conditions, and the systems that continue to shape and change them. It is also a way to construct, observe, and discover their lives and presence as alive. Photography and video function as central research tools. The camera becomes a witness to these often otherwise invisible processes. By working mainly with minimal technical equipment, often my phone, the research emphasizes silence and attention and uses a minimum of staged representation. Filming the movement of the figures, their relocation, and their restoration is understood as a way of studying how violence and care physically operate over time.
Archival research is another tool used as an artistic research tool to approach photographs from the archives as living systems that continue to produce meaning. By reconstructing production histories, tracing missing images, and assembling new visual constellations, the research exposes how colonial narratives are stabilized, distorted, or erased through archival logic. At the same time, new artistic documentation is reimagined. Through approaches inspired by critical fabulation, the project not only reconstructs what can be proven historically but also reflects on what is (made) invisible.
Film, photography, archiving, and writing are used in my work to give presence and identity to the figures. This speculative dimension does not replace historical research but aims to collaborate with it and question how histories of colonial violence can be narrated without reproducing the power structures that created the violence itself. In the following section, I focus on three key areas: the physical "body," archives, and colonial museum politics of the (A)lif/ve-size figure.