Nanina Guyer, curator of photography at Zurich's Museum Rietberg, has organized the exhibition "A Kind of Paradise: Colonial-Era Photography in Contemporary Art," which examines how contemporary artists repurpose archival colonial-era photographs. The show features 20 artists, including Sammy Baloji, Rosana Paulino, Sasha Huber, Dinh Q. Lê, Wendy Red Star, Omar Victor Diop, and Zenaéca Singh, who transform these historical images into sculptures, films, and recontextualized works. The exhibition is divided into four sections: artists as archivists, confronting stereotypes, healing, and a final section on repair.
The exhibition matters because it highlights a growing trend among contemporary artists to engage critically with colonial-era photography, a phenomenon Guyer noticed while researching archives. By reworking these images—often with humor, satire, or radical empathy—artists challenge historical narratives of exploitation and racism, offering new perspectives on identity and memory. The show also raises questions about the ethics of displaying original archival materials versus artistic reinterpretations, as Guyer deliberately chose not to show the originals alongside the artworks to preserve the artists' intent to "repair or erase" the original images.