Moor with Minerals

For four months, the so-called “Moor with emeralds” from the Historic Green Vault presented something different on its tray than the well-known and prized emerald specimen. These were inconspicuous, tiny crystals which, although chemically speaking, are minerals, are no longer recognised as such. This is because they were not formed in a “natural”, geological way, as the scientific definition would have it: They owe their existence to human activity.

In 2017, mineralogists published a list of these “new minerals”, which illustrates how the consequences of human activity are even inscribed in the geological framework of the earth. After millions of years, the substances could still bear witness to a human age, just as the “natural” - albeit also manipulated - emerald stage bears witness to its geological epoch.

Once again, the terms are problematic: “nature” and “culture” are conflated. From a post-colonial perspective, the provenance of the original emerald specimen from Colombian emerald mines, which were opened up during the Spanish wars of conquest around 1537, is problematic. This question is deliberately linked to the “Moor”, the carrier figure, which has become a much-discussed object of study in contemporary ethnology, not only because of its racist title, but above all because of its puzzling inconsistencies. She seems to have been created from a potpourri of characteristics that were considered “foreign” and “exotic” from a European perspective: dark skin colour, African-American physiognomy, tattoos and pieces of jewellery that were attributed to indigenous South Americans. These transcontinental features culminate in an almost eclectic manner in a figure that thus becomes a type figure of “otherness” in the collection of a European prince. The exhibit is imbued with colonial mechanisms - the supporting figure as well as the emerald step.

The stories that the “New Minerals” tell us in connection with the history of the figure and the emeralds could change the way we look at the object, the collection and our self-image as inhabitants of the earth.

With his artistic intervention, the display of tiny crystals, Bertram Haude deliberately puts his finger in the wound, as he negotiates the exhibit on a level not previously addressed: the geological one - after all, anthropogenic minerals are the products of global, geological colonisation. For the first time in the history of the exhibit, post-colonial issues are not addressed via ethnological approaches - with a view to the figure - but via geopolitical ones - with a view to the mineral and mineral “raw material”.
(Bertram Haude and Kerstin Flasche)

The project was funded by:
Andrea von Braun Foundation Munich
Cultural Foundation of the Free State of Saxony
European Year of Cultural Heritage 2018