Protektorat
C/O Berlin Talent Award 2024
Veronika Epple/Silvia Rosi/Katrin Bauer

The Italian-Togolese artist Silvia Rosi (*1992) explores post-colonialthemes such as migration, identity and collective memory from a diasporic perspective in an interplay of staged photography, video, performative elements and edited archive material. In Protektorat (2022–2024), Rosi sheds light on the complex history of language under colonial occupation in Togo. Based on archive material from the Togolese National Archives in Lomé, she thematizes the mechanisms of power and resistance that are anchored in colonial language policies. Administered as a German so-called protectorate from 1884 to 1914 and later placed under British-French military administration, the languages German, English and French still shape the West African country today. At the same time, the indigenous languages Ewe and Mina have been preserved through oral tradition despite systematic suppression.