Demounting Louis Agassiz: Artistic Renegotiation of Archive, Memory & Place
Sasha Huber, Diwas Raja Khatri
Sasha Huber
Demounting Louis Agassiz – Artistic Renegotiation of Archive, Memory & Place
Moderated by Diwas Raja KC
Since over a decade, multidisciplinary visual artist researcher Sasha Huber of Swiss-Haitian heritage has been realising reparative interventions around the world, often collaboratively and artworks prompted by the cultural activist campaign Demounting Louis Agassiz. Initiated in 2007 by Swiss historian and political activist Hans Fässler, the committee seeks to reassess the legacy of the Swiss-born glaciologist and racist Louis Agassiz (1807–1873). His scientific contributions to the fields of glaciology, palaeontology and geology resulted in over 80 landmarks bearing his name on Earth, the Moon, and Mars. Less well known, however, was Agassiz’s legacy of ‘scientific’ racism, and how he used his position to actively promote the subjugation, exploitation, and segregation of Black people and other people of colour. He commissioned J.T. Zealy (1812-1893) to photograph enslaved people on the Edgehill plantation in South Carolina in March of 1850, using the technology of photography to further his eugenics campaign.
Sasha Huber will speak about her work with a focus on the series Tailoring Freedom and how over time unexpected relationships emerged connecting the past with the present.