Installation View – ‘Artist Intervention’ – SKD Völkerkundemuseum Herrnhut
As an intervention in the Völkerkundemuseum, Linger has not only taken over a wall with a Winti film and a display case, but he also removed a number of Winti-related objects from the display case next to it out of respect for the Winti religion. These removed objects should only be seen and used for ritual purposes by initiates in the Winti religion. The removed objects have been used in rituals, as traces of “pemba doti” (white kaolin clay) indicate. They are replaced with plexiglas silhouettes. For Linger, Winti is a means to (re)connect with his roots and recurs in all his artworks. The (Dutch) colonial officials and Herrnhut missionaries however , saw the Winti religion as idoltary and devil worship, as in the document shown in the display case: a diary by missionary Glöckler describing his experiences in Suriname and his observations of Winti practices among black people in Suriname.