INTRODUCTION

Our topic is the displacement and theft of art. Our focus lies on art that has been displaced through and during colonialism; theft in the form of falsely defining the artist’s identity and therefore changing the context around the art piece; and art that in art theory is understood as synonym to war spoils and/or Raubkunst.

Art is an important form of expression for a culture and allows it to connect with its history. Violently ripping an artwork from its origin can cause it to lose said cultural connection or misplace its original context.
In that case, its history gets erased or its course altered: the roots and origin of the artwork become obscured.
The constant fight to retrieve what rightfully belongs to its initial owners eventually overshadows the artwork and its significance, and can force it to become a symbol of oppression.
When researching different stolen artworks and the consequences of their displacement, the void that it leaves behind felt particularly significant to us. We want to look at this loss with our project: the empty space left behind.

To visualize this emptiness, we want to create a VR museum experience, where we will exhibit illustrations of the previously mentioned empty spaces. We chose this format, as it offers the opportunity to not only show the original sites, but also include the story surrounding the art piece in a visual manner.
These illustrations will be accompanied by museum labels giving information about the art piece itself, the artist, its origins, who stole it and where it is now. We want to give the needed context to show each artwork’s significance to its original community and the impact of the violence that was inflicted upon it.

With our project we aim to bring awareness to how the consequential problems of the displacement of art prevail; how long it takes to give them back, the narrative of giving them back and how institutions are being praised for returning what was never theirs.
Through this we want to emphasize the emptiness that the stolen work leaves behind and how important art is for a culture to survive.