📷 As a French scientist of African descent, raised by a mother who archived and conserved stories others preferred to forget, I walked into Huis Marseille’s Revoir Paris with high hopes a few weeks ago—and left with familiar discomfort.

The exhibition showcases the Séeberger brothers’ photographs of early 1900s Paris, meticulously capturing social class distinctions. Yet, race and ethnicity are conspicuously absent. As if colonial Paris wasn’t racialized. As if visibility only mattered for the fashionable, not the displaced. That silence is loud.

One featured site, the Jardin des Plantes, presents animals—yet just next door, people from colonized lands were exhibited in cages at the Jardin d’Acclimatation, under the guise of ethnological exhibitions. It was Western science’s groundbreaking innovation then.

This omission is more than a curatorial oversight; it’s a disservice to European descendants, who are denied a full understanding of their history, and to global majority communities, who are denied their dignity.

Western science’s unofficial motto is “shoot innovation first, ask questions later,” and let the humanities deal with the casualties. Invalidating harmful scientific theories doesn’t erase created realities. Therefore, there’s a growing movement in the Netherlands toward honest, decolonial art practices. However, inviting curators from nations where this reckoning is still often suppressed without ensuring critical reflection can quietly reinforce the very violence that Dutch institutions aim to address.

💬 If you visit Revoir Paris, go with critical eyes and an open heart. Ask what’s missing. Reflect on what silence protects.

We must do better: 🔹 Contextualize every image fully. 🔹 Invite curators with decolonial awareness, not just credentials. 🔹 Include the silenced. Truth isn’t neutral.