BREMEN.- Fernando Bryce, who was born in Lima in 1965 and now lives and works in New York, has long been one of South America’s leading contemporary artists. In his group of works he reflects on international and geopolitical events of the twentieth century. He culls archives for print material which he then reproduces using his own slower method of ink-on-paper drawings. He is less interested in reconstructing history than in revealing ideologically-loaded imagery and the power strategies used in print media and films. This exhibition presents his most recent cycle, which explores Bremen’s colonial history and the its colonial revisionist tendencies after 1914.

While Bryce addresses a lengthy historical process of several decades in his series of work Unforgotten Land, he focused on more limited periods of time in his earlier works on colonialism. The exhibition features three more groups of work that are dedicated to the issue of European imperialism in the context of colonialism.

Series of works „Unforgotten Land” (2017)
For his complex series of works Unforgotten Land, Bryce assembled numerous ink drawings in wall collages dedicated to the history of the colonial idea in Bremen. The artist takes today’s elephant monument as a starting point to look back on the period of German colonialism and focuses on involved merchants and scientists from Bremen. He also addresses Bremen’s policies with regard to exhibitions, museums, and monuments between 1890 and 1941, which impressively reflects the city’s economic and political attitude towards colonialism. The ink drawings are based on various historical documents, for which Bryce intensely investigated and took photographs in Bremen’s archives, so he could later translate them into the medium of drawing. Before critically selecting the best sourcesfor his project, he copied more than 1,000 letters, newspaper articles, photographs, and advertising pamphlets at the Bremen State Archive, the Bremen Chamber of Commerce Archive, the Böttcherstrasse Museums, and the Kunsthalle Bremen.

The Series “Auf frischer Tat / In the Act” (2016)
In his 2016 series Auf frischer Tat / In the Act for the Berlin Museum für Naturkunde, Bryce examined the provenance of the skeleton of a Brachiosaurus, which is still one of the museum’s main attractions today. He reproduced reports from the so-called Tendaguru Expedition (1909 / 13) of the GeologicalPaleontological Institute and the Museum of Berlin University, during which local forced labourers unearthed a dinosaur skeleton in the then colony German East Africa, today Tanzania. The artist embedded the press reports in book covers of travel accounts from Africa, biological and zoological papers, and an advertisement of a taxidermist. Taking the excavation as his starting point, Bryce reflected on the connections between the passion for hunting and lust for trophies, on scientific curiosity and its use of political power relations as a means to an end.

The series “Paradoxurusadustus” (2016)
The scientific impetus also leaves a deep impression in the series Paradoxurus adustus (2016). It comprises screen prints of historical labels that Bryce found during his research in the archives of the Berlin Museum für Naturkunde. These labels were used for objects, drawers, and cabinets; they indicated species or category, collector’s name and places of origin, and develop their very own poetry of past archiving methods in museums.

The triptych “Untitled (Le réseau intercolonial français de T.S.F. ferait le tour du monde)” (2016)
The triptych Untitled (Le réseau intercolonial français de T.S.F. ferait le tour du monde) of the same year is dedicated to the interrelations between France and its colonies with regard to the very different fields of modern transmission technology and the world of fashion. At its left, it depicts the Eiffel Tower that became the landmark of Paris at the World’s Fair of 1889. In 1914 it was upgraded to a transmitter. Its powerful antennas were able to transmit a time signal across continents, which made it possible to synchronise time in France and its colonies. In the cartographic illustration, the Eiffel Tower symbolizes the enormous area of influence and power of the French metropolis. The flanking portrayals display clips from fashion magazines, contrasting the extravagant women’s hat fashion of Parisian haute couture with supposedly exotic African headdresses. In light of the bewildering correspondence, the illustrations pose questions concerning the influence of African culture on the French metropolis.

“To the Civilized World” (2014)
To the Civilized World is the title of the same-named manifesto of 1914 that was signed by 93 German intellectuals of arts and sciences at the home front, and which defiantly rejected the accusation of German atrocities in the course of the invasion of neutral Belgium. Bryce confronts the copy of the manifesto with about 100 drawings in a change of perspective, which depict in particular the destruction of the library of the Old University of Leuven from an Allied viewpoint. The library lost an irreplaceable collection of books and manuscripts when about one sixth of the city was destroyed by German forces as a repressive measure after the alleged appearance of Belgian guerrilla troops. A total of 248 civilians were killed – one of the war crimes and reasons for the Allied entry into the war. Furthermore, Bryce’s drawings depict images of the Reims Cathedral, in which the kings of France had once been anointed and crowned, as it became the target of German artillery precisely for that reason. The artist selected numerous press reports that impressively illustrate both events in images of ruins and destruction, denounce them as “Teutonic barbarism”, and question the notion of German “culture” in contrast to the French concept of “civilisation”. Bryce is interested in the concept of culture itself as well as the close ties between the destruction of cultural assets and war propaganda.