White People in West Africa

1989 - 1993

Object description	Installation of 82 photographs and 3 texts
Object category	sculpture
Dimensions	Objektmaß: height: 16 cm, width: 24,1 cm, height: 21,5 cm, width: 28 cm, height: 31 cm, width: 31 cm, depth: 6 cm
Year of acquisition	2005
Inventory number	G 1139/0
Creditline	mumok - Museum moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien
Rights reference	Fraser, Andrea
Further information about the person	Fraser, Andrea [GND] \| Fraser, Andrea [ULAN]
Literature	Why picture now/Fotografie, Film, Video, heute Andrea Fraser

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.”