“From an ethnographic museum- Abduction of the virgins”
Creativity, art, creativity and the imagination:
Hannah Hoch’s “From an ethnographic museum- Abduction of the virgins” uses the red coloured trees to present a contrast, while communicating a clear message about identity and representation. Hannah Hoch’s strategic placement of the red trees in the background contrasts well against the overall dark blue and the brown statues. This helps the image look aesthetically pleasing to some degree despite the incongruity of the German woman’s face being on the bronze statue. These trees had been taken from an article which referred to them (the trees) as the cure for malaria. The placement of trees here, next to the wooden statue forces the audience to make connections between the two, which ultimately helps establish the fact that the image conveys the view that African regions and diseases go hand in hand. This is in line with the German point of view back then because they thought of the African regions as being unhygienic even the home of diseases. Even though she presents these regions in a bad light through the use of the trees, her intention is to challenge this view, which she accomplishes through the portrayal of an inverted power dynamic between Congo and Germany.
Representation, culture, community and identity
Hannah Hoch’s “From an ethnographic museum- Abduction of the virgins” conveyed the idea of an inversion of the power dynamic between Congo and Germany. The time period that this artwork was created in is also to be considered as it was when Germans thought of their race as being “superior” and looked at all other races with varying levels of disgust. Hannah Hoch presented the inversion through the use of a wooden sculpture from Congo and a German woman’s head. She placed the backwards facing head of the German woman on top of one of the sculpture heads. The resulting image looked quite incongruous but presented important ideas about the treatment of woman in both cultures. As the wooden sculpture was titled “Abduction of the virgins” by a German magazine, it is fair to assume that the magazine thought that the image depicted woman being taken away as sexual assets, which was in line with their thoughts about the culture where the image originated from.However, Hannah Hoch’s strategic placement of the German woman’s head looking backwards re contextualised the image by portraying that Germany was in fact moving backwards in their treatment of woman while Congo was improving (as the other wooden sculptures were facing the front). Secondly, the German woman’s head facing being carried on a wooden statue from Congo could also be representative of the fact that Congo was taking away German assets just as Germany had taken away Congo’s assets forcibly. This is because the image has the effect of the German woman being taken away forcibly. Thus, Hoch’s work introduced the inversion of the existing power dynamic through re contextualisation.