Ausstellungseröffnung: Black Comics

Black Comics
From colonialism to the Black Panther
November 16, 2024 - April 27, 2025

Opening of the exhibition:
Friday, November 15, 2024
6:00 pm
In Studio B of the Dortmund City and State Library
Free admission, no registration required

Exhibition curated by Dr. Alexander Braun

Western democracies, especially Germany, have begun to deal intensively with their colonial history. This has revealed painful abysses of robbery, abduction, enslavement and genocide, which have been concealed for far too long by the fiction of adventure and the supposed development of civilization. The reality was different: inhumane and cruel.

And what does the comic have to say about this? It is difficult to expect that the cultural products of racist societies would not present a similar picture. One negative example is Hergé's "Tintin in the Congo" from 1930, in which the blonde Belgian reporter alongside Catholic missionaries brings education and virtue to the "stupid" Africans.
But only nine years later, Jijé did better and gave European comics a black boy as the title hero ("Blondin et Cirage") in the middle of the Nazi occupation of Belgium.

What's more, despite its colonial agenda, "Tintin in the Congo" became a bestseller in the Congo itself and remains one of the most popular comic titles in Africa to this day. The album became the initial spark for an African comic culture of its own: around 50 percent of comic artists on the entire continent come from the Congo. The example shows: There is little to be gained here with crude clichés and quick condemnations. The topic is very complex and full of ambivalences.

After a welcoming address by Jörg Stüdemann, Head of Cultural Affairs, curator Dr. Alexander Braun will give an introduction to this complex topic.