Re-Rooted: Liberating Colonial African Collections Through Indigenous Knowledge Systems

Re-Rooted: Liberating Colonial African Collections Through Indigenous Knowledge Systems applies research and artistic findings to practice by centring Indigenous African knowledge, feminist epistemologies, and ancestral authority in the representation of Egyptian ancestral remains and Mozambican belongings held in Europe.

The project is a focused 12-month active change museum practice led by TheMuseumsLab Alumni collective Disrupting and Reorienting Restitution (DRR). It is a transformative, cross-continental collaboration between Women’s History Museum of Zambia (WHMZ), the Horniman Museum and Gardens (UK) and the GRASSI Museum Leipzig (Germany). Building on DRR2023 TheMuseumsLab funded project “Forbidden Knowledge”, it applies research and artistic findings to practice by centring Indigenous African knowledge, feminist epistemologies, and ancestral authority in the representation of Egyptian ancestral remains and Mozambican belongings held in Europe. Egyptian ancestral remains— among the most displaced and dispersed globally—remain detached from modern Egyptian communities and continue to reinforce colonial frame-works in museum policy and display. Similarly, the GRASSI Museum is reflecting on 50 Mozambican objects obtained during the 1931 “Forgotten Expedition”, which exemplifies silenced colonial histories. Despite growing decolonial efforts, few initiatives achieve structural change. Re-rooted pilots a practical model for institutional transformation by embedding indigenous approaches across six core areas of museum practice: curation, education, documentation, communication, commercial activity, and visitor services. The project will include:

• digital artist residencies (Egyptian and Mozambican)
• diaspora and source-community consultations
• a co-created toolkit for community stewardship
• peer-exchange sessions between WHMZ and European professionals
• pop-up displays and digital publications in London, Leipzig, and Lusaka.

Project Team

Alumni

• Samba Yonga | DRR collective member, project lead and WHMZ curatorial representative, liaising and peer-exchanging with European and project‘s community partners
• Sabine Wohlfarth | DRR collective member, project co-lead and GRASSI Museum of Ethnology representative, facilitation of community access and artist digital residency, liaising and peer exchanging with project partners
• Eno Inyangete | DRR collective member, offering assistance with the design and production of social media campaign and project outputs
• Heba Abd el Gawad | DRR collective member, project co-lead and Horniman Museum and Gardens representative, facilitating community and artist access to Egyptian ancestral remains at the Horniman, liaising and peer exchanging with project partners
• Sofia Lovegrove | DRR collective member, supporting project management and liaising internally between DRR project members, monitoring alignment with project timeline and progress
• Imogen Coulson | DRR collective member. supporting project management, financial and technical (digital) assistance

Partner Museums and Involved Institutions

• Women’s History Museum of Zambia | Lusaka, Zambia
• Horniman Museum and Gardens | London, UK
• GRASSI Museum | Leipzig, Germany

From Connection to Collaboration

The collaboration between the Horniman Museum (UK), the GRASSI Museum of Ethnology Leipzig (Germany), and the Women’s History Museum of Zambia (WHMZ) is rooted in the shared journey of all three institutional leads as TheMuseumsLab 2022 alumni. During the fellowship, we co-founded the Disrupting and Reorienting Restitution collective, a peer network dedicated to reimagining restitution and decolonial practice through Indigenous knowledge systems and community-led governance. Through TheMuseumsLab’s immersive seminars, co-learning modules, and institutional residencies, we discovered a common commitment to move beyond object restitution toward holistic, care-centred approaches encompassing ancestral remains, colonial archives, and material culture. The fellowship’s emphasis on equitable partnerships and mutual learning laid the foundation for long-term collaboration, evolving into our 2023 Forbidden Knowledge project funded by TheMuseumsLab alumni fund and the current CollabFund Re-Rooted project.

Re-Rooted pilot project directly enacts TheMuseumsLab’s values—shared authority, ethical co-curation, and transcontinental knowledge exchange—through digital, Indigenous-led reinterpretation of two complex African collections: the Horniman’s Egyptian ancestral remains and the GRASSI’s Mozambique holdings. The WHMZ anchors the partnership in feminist, matrilineal, and oral traditions, ensuring that Indigenous epistemologies guide institutional transformation.

Participation in the CollabFund initiative allows us to deepen and test these MuseumsLab fellowship-born frameworks in practice—developing replicable, community-informed models of care, governance, and digital engagement. By generating open-access toolkits, artistic responses, and institutional audits, Re-Rooted contributes tangible outcomes to TheMuseumsLab network, embodying its mission to turn dialogue into sustained structural change across African and European museums.

The initiative TheMuseumsLab CollabFund is funded by the Kulturstiftung des Bundes (German Federal Cultural Foundation).