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Conversation

LETTER "NOT ABOUT COLONY"
Frantz Fanon (1925–1961)

Saturday, 6 December 2025, at 5 p.m.

To whom were Frantz Fanon’s words once addressed, and to whom are they directed today? His writings called on colonized peoples to overthrow the regimes that had enslaved, dehumanized, and objectified them — a call to build a new, free subjectivity beyond the colonial divide.

Moving between psychiatry and politics, between psychoanalytic practice and direct participation in the decolonial struggle, Fanon pointed to the far-reaching mechanisms through which the colonial subject is constituted and to the destructive effects of the colony’s collective unconscious. He believed that the path to liberation lay solely through purifying, regenerative violence. His ideas influenced both the development of postcolonial theories and the revision of classical Marxism, especially in relation to understanding colonial realities and the anti-colonial revolutionary struggles of the Third World. All of this contributed to the resonance of Fanon’s thought in our own context as well, beginning in the era of non-aligned Yugoslavia.

The International Seminar “Mining the ‘Heart of Darkness’” published on our YouTube Channel

We are pleased to inform you that the full recording of the seminar “Mining the 'Heart of Darkness': Historical Legacies, (Anti-)Colonial Imaginary, and Contemporary Perspectives”, held at the Museum of African Art on 26–27 September 2025, is now available on the Museum’s YouTube channel.

We invite you to revisit the discussions, presentations, and critical reflections shared during these two days, and to engage with the important questions raised by our speakers.

We thank the Polish Institute in Belgrade, and all participants and supporters who made this event possible.

Thematic Exhibition

RECORDING AFRICA: THE TRAVEL LENS OF THE CARAVAN OF FRIENDSHIP

November 27, 2025 – April 13, 2026

Exhibition Curator: Milica Naumov

At the beginning of 1962, as parts of the African continent were undergoing profound geopolitical transformations and emerging from the era of colonial rule, a group of travelers embarked on a months-long journey through Egypt, Sudan, Ethiopia, Somalia, Kenya, and Tanganyika. The expedition, titled The Caravan of Friendship and led by Tibor Sekelj, was born out of a belief that encounters between people can create spaces of understanding—not only on the level of ntergovernmental or official politics, but through the exchange of glances and words; through the frames captured by these self-organized travelers in motion.

The exhibition “Recording Africa: The Travel Lens of the Caravan of Friendship” at the Museum of African Art opens this journey through the eyes of Film News cameraman Branko Marjanović, a member of the expedition whose photo album today stands as both document and personal diary—a testimony to an era, but also an invitation to read the echoes of his explorations through landscapes yet unexplored by his lens. The camera in his hand recorded scenes of a continent in transformation, as well as traces of his own curiosity, attentiveness, and the limits of what can, or cannot be “framed.”

New Online Presentation

MAU DIGITAL IMPRINT

The project of digitally recording the permanent display and whole Museum of African Art (MAU) building was conducted in several stages over the course of 2015, 2021 and 2022, with the aim of creating a so-called digital imprint as form of cultural heritage preservation. In light of the announced reconstruction of the Museum, by mapping all relevant data, we wanted to create lasting documentation of the initial architecture, as well as the concept of the first permanent display of the MAU. Recording the space and exhibition setting of the Museum using the most current technology and translating the data into a digital impression will make them permanently accessible to all future researchers and other interested parties, even when they cease to exist in their current state.

We invite you to actively explore our new online presentation www.otisak.mau.rs. Enjoy panoramic virtual walks through the museum, encounter the permanent display, museum garden or murals painted onto the façade, and investigate the many contents regarding exhibited pieces and collecting trajectories. Go back to 1977 and read about some of the impressions at the time of the opening of this lasting symbol of Non-Aligned times – a museum created on the grounds of friendship and sincere support of the peoples of Africa, and admiration for the power of their artistic expression.

Free MAU catalogs available on the site

Browse through some of the classics offered by our exhibition catalogs, which are available on the Museum's website.

MAU presents its new visual identity

The new visual identity of the Museum of African Art (MAU) is based on a simple and recognisable, reduced geometric form and pattern that is widely present in the arts of African countries, but can also be seen in the design of the first museum permanent exhibition. It is the zigzag line motif that symbolises rhythm, movement and the flow of life. At the same time, as a continuous restless pulsation, the minimalist, yet modern and dynamic zigzag line connects the past and the future and invites active participation.

By reflecting the museum's mission and continuing practises already established, the new identity is at once an invitation to play, to participate, and to stimulate dialogue through the interweaving of ideas, experiences, and knowledge. The typography of the Museum of African Art's acronym takes its cue from this motif, as does the new, distinguishable, easy-to-use, and memorable sign, composed of three letters: MAU, a name familiar to the general public and already widely accepted.