Nora Al-Badri/Nikolai Nelles

Works

Not A Single Bone
,

2017, Installation

Nora Al-Badri and Nikolai Nelles initially contacted the Berlin Natural History Museum to discuss colonial collecting in German museums. Despite the institution refusing to collaborate with the artists, they »found« the data of the dinosaur skeleton and produced a copy of the femur of the Giraffatitan, which is the centrepiece of the museum and taken from Tanzania during colonial times along with 230 tons of dinosaur bones. In close proximity to the Humboldt Forum, where the collection of the ethnological museum Berlin will be exhibited, the debate about the provenance of colonial artefacts and the representation of non-western cultures articulated in Not a Single Bone serves as a comment on the reality of today’s cultural politics.

Nora Al-Badri and Nikolai Nelles have worked together in Berlin since 2009. Their artistic practice encompasses visual art, documentary filmmaking and cultural activism. The artist duo has participated in the 3rd Design Bienniale, Istanbul (2016), the Darmstadt Tage der Fotografie (2016) and has staged public interventions at the 4th Biennale Thessaloniki (2013) and Occupy Frankfurt (2011).