Eye Filmmuseum's 'Eye(s) Open' Reinterprets Colonial Archival Footage

The Eye Filmmuseum in Amsterdam presents 'Eye(s) Open', an exhibition featuring ten artworks that reinterpret colonial archival footage from Indonesia and Suriname. The show addresses the camera as a tool of power, highlighting how colonial films were made exclusively by colonizers, perpetuating inequality. Among the works is Miranda Pennell's 'A Person of the Forest', which tells the story of Dutch violence in Indonesia from the perspective of an orangutan who lived in the Sumatran jungle around 1900. Pennell uses propaganda films of plantations, and the orangutan narrates the destruction of her home, her capture, and her transport to Amsterdam for exhibition in a zoo. The artist lends her voice with a dry, detached British accent, a choice that carries colonial connotations. The work is described as moving and incantatory, with direct, poetic language. It concludes with footage of the storage facilities at Naturalis in Leiden, where the orangutan exists in taxidermied form, symbolizing colonial secrets. The exhibition runs at the Eye Filmmuseum, and the review was written by Maurits de Bruijn for Mister Motley.