Healing Power

Healing Power is a new temporary exhibition at the Tropenmuseum running until June 6, 2022. It approaches healing from the perspectives of shamanism, ayahuasca, natural medicine, rhythm, and contemporary art. The question in the above title is taken from one of the walls of the exhibition, leaving the viewer wondering about the meaning of healing as it is understood all around the globe.

Psychiatric disorders are on the rise in the West and particularly in those countries that have adopted the full neoliberal economy model. As a result, the demand for counselling is going up as people find it difficult to cope with an increasingly alienating, high-pressured environment. There are also a range of practices that don’t stem from traditionally Western, Judeo-Christian contexts that globalization and commercialization has mainstreamed into the Global North. Healing Power offers a presentation of such practices. Due to the history of the museum, this has simultaneously triggered a debate about the division between art and ethnography. The Tropenmuseum was established in 1864 as a collection of artefacts taken from the Dutch overseas colonies. Additionally, the museum functioned partially as an institution displaying ‘educational’ content which basically meant colonial propaganda. The reformation of the language and topics of the exhibitions started in the 1970s and lasted till 1990s.

The exhibition opens with an installation composed of two sculptures Freud White Sacrifice by Nigerian artist Sokari Douglas Camp. Camp shows two figures rotating 360 degrees around their axis to communicate her vision of psychoanalysis as a dominating way of treating psychological problems. Further on, the viewer gets acquainted with diverse forms of shamanism, as well as various amulets, cloaks or masks used during those rituals. A significant part of the exhibition is also devoted to five individuals who carry on traditions of the Santo Daime, Winti or Vodun religions in the Netherlands. Each of them explains their story in short videos along with their personal motivations behind the practices. Exhibition acknowledges the importance of ancestors in cultivating the spiritual approach to healthcare. For instance, in the case of Petra Nelstein, who is a Mestizo shaman. In her work, she applies indigenous knowledge passed on from generation to generation which reveals to the believers a harmonious relation between the world of animals, plants and human.The forces of nature are also a crucial element in the witchcraft practice of Coby Rijkers, who with her partner started the first school for witches in Waarle, the Netherlands. The non-Western focus of the exhibition narrative is combined with well-known contemporary performance artists. Among diverse ethnographic objects one encounters video documentation of Marina Abramović’s The Artist is Present or I Like American and America Likes Me by Joseph Beuys. The decision to juxtapose the different Western and non-Western practices implies a certain degree of decolonial reading done by the Tropenmuseum.

Further on, Healing Power continues with a project by Dutch photographer Jeroen Toirkens who captured the daily lives of Mongolian Duhka people. Portraits depict families engaged in their own rituals that bear a certain resemblance to shamanism. It looks like the placement of works has been carefully selected, taking into account the overlap of sound and visual information. This impression lingers on until one reaches the final chapter of this exhibition- the Rhythm and Connection. The viewer enters an installation composed of collages of images evoking a hypnotic trance experience. Everything is enhanced by up-tempo electronic music in the background.

All works on display come with short descriptions. Yet, it requires quite a bit of personal effort on the side of the spectator to figure out the differences between exhibited objects and their actual relation to the theme of the exhibition. Is its objective really to teach visitors about different healing practices or is it rather the abundance objects on display that matters here?

I was left with the impression that the wealth of the collection was more present than a proper engagement with the notion of healing.

Reaching the end of the exhibition, I was left with the impression that the wealth of the collection was more present than a proper engagement with the notion of healing. I didn’t feel like I had encountered a satisfying response to the question “Where should one go to seek explanations for physical, mental, or social unrest?” Perhaps the lack of an appropriate answer is also a kind of answer in itself. Put in a post-pandemic frame of analysis, one could perhaps say that Healing Power focuses on an aspect of self-care from the perspective of those  of us who where lucky enough to productively hibernate in the comfort of their homes. It underlines the presence of power inequities in today’s healing ‘narratives’. Overwhelmed by the visually saturated contemporary culture, we frequently search for methods that bring us closer to a supposed harmony with nature, all the while forgetting that those are very much entangled in the ideologies of a global extraction economy.

Importantly, with so little information about the cultures from which the objects originated, what type of knowledge does one gain after all? Yes, the viewer does get insights into the role of rituals and ritualistic objects play in different non-Western societies. But this is not a very reciprocal relationship. Like with the ‘stolen’ healing practices, it is the Western viewer who is the sole beneficiary of an exercise in aesthetic therapy. What is missing is not only the understanding of the need for different ways of knowing oneself and one’s social and natural environment, but also the awareness of the founding values on which these practices were historically built (different values for different peoples), including the price they had to pay by implementing these values in those practices. The language of Healing Power is seemingly objective, yet what is the benefit of such an exhibition for the communities that are being represented? What can be the value of spiritual knowledge that has been ‘hijacked’ from its communities and commodified for Western purposes without any reference or regard for their original practitioners?

Now go, visit and judge for yourself!