Marco Pando
Marco Pando’s Tintin back to Peru has its starting point in the cartoon ‘Prisoners of the Sun’ by Hergé (1907 – 1983). In his new project, the Peruvian artist follows the footsteps of Tintin to confront his image of his native country against the stereotypical represented image by the Belgian cartoonist. With a focus on the relation between fictive and real landscapes, Pando writes a new storyboard in the form of modified cartoon pages, where his own drawings and photographs of his journey replace the original images.
Sascha Pohle
Sascha Pohle’s installation German Indian deals with the widespread phenomenon of impersonation of Native Americans in Germany. Like Hergé who has never visited Peru, the German writer Karl May (1842 – 1912) had never been in the countries where his adventure novels took place. Following May’s legacy in his exotic fictional adventures, joined with romanticized notions and identifications with the Indian, there was a strong Indian Hobby throughout Germany since the early 20th century, which continued to exist in both Germanys (former GDR and West Germany) until today. The installation German Indian simulates an ethnographic museum display, which evolves questions about the ambiguities of authenticity, identity and authorship by using Pohle’s re-appropriated Hobby Indian objects, such as re-drawings, re-photographs, re-edited 16 mm film footage and ‘indianistic’ artifacts.
The exhibition title Villains and Heroes draws reference to memories of a childhood role-playing game of Cowboys versus Indians. In the image accompanying the invitation you can see Hergé (first on the left) at a Belgian scout camp in 1922, feathered and wrapped up in a blanket as a North American Indian, fully entering into the spirit of the fantasy.