How can research, performing arts, and African diaspora communities collaborate towards postcolonial restorative justice around displaced African heritage? The collaborative and multidisciplinary project Xevieso: Bring Me Back Home (partially funded by CHAIN) connects research on African heritage in Dutch museums with the imaginative art of theatre. Together with a theatre company and two Ghanaian community organizations, we develop an experimental and participatory theatre production to generate both community benefit and new research insights at the intersection of heritage, history, identity, and cultural memory.

Responding to current debates about the colonial provenance and restitution of African cultural heritage held in European museums, the project explores and re-evaluates the layers of meaning, value, and power enshrined in this heritage. Guiding questions are: How can we reverse the colonial pattern of rupture and appropriation? How can such collections enable African diaspora communities to reconnect with their cultural heritage and history in ways that are restorative and empowering?

Challenging postcolonial power hierarchies that affect African diaspora communities and the ways they can or cannot access, know, or own their cultural heritage, the project uses performing arts to explore different forms of return, reconnection, and reconciliation.

Researcher Utrecht University: Dr. Marleen de Witte

Research by Utrecht University: Religious Matters in an Entangled World & het X Pressing Matter work package ‘Heritage and the Question of Conversion’
Societal partners: Ghana Union Netherlands (Nii Ocquaye Hammond); New Dutch Connections (Bright Richards); Ghana Agoro Mma (Veronica van de Kamp)