ARTIST STATEMENT – USUS FRUCTUS ABUSUS _ La Blanche et la Noire

In Roman law, ownership was defined as the absolute, perpetual and exclusive full enjoyment over an object or corporeal entity. USUS was the right to make use of the object according to its destination or nature, FRUCTUS to receive the fruits, ABUSUS the right of disposition based on the power to modify, sell or destroy the object or given entity.

Museums originated as institutions more than 300 years ago, when certain royal collections were made accessible to the great public. They became instrumental for defining the identity of nations. Bearing in mind the outstanding colonialist origin of many of their collections, then conflict with History narrative, the creation of knowledge and, consequently, collective and individual memory, becomes unavoidable. Passing in review the historicity and the historiography of the relation between anthropology and the museum collections assembled from a despoiling colonial past, it becomes relevant how these spaces have reinforced exotism and distinction, intrinsically related to supremacist discourses. Museums as creators of imaginaries, as institutions that aren’t and have never been neutral, have but benefited from the exhibited objects and artefacts. Is the museum concept universal?