Relic Hunter
Filmmaker, artist and de facto historian Maeve Brennan aims to make your next trip to the museum an uncomfortable one.
In July 2024, a series of holy statues looted from Cambodia was repatriated to the country from their “home” in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Met, in Manhattan. The funny thing about these particular relics was that they were stolen in the 1970s – hardly an old-timey treasure for an adventurer oblivious to the value of cultural artefacts. It was renowned art dealer Douglas Latchford who orchestrated the sale of the antiquities, and who was later indicted for wire fraud and smuggling in 2019. He died in 2020.
Repatriation, at the vary least awareness, of looted artefacts is a thing these days, rightly so, and it’s at the heart of artist Maeve Brennan’s inaugural solo exhibition in Asia, Maeve Brennan: Records, now on at Tai Kwun. Brennan is sitting in a corner of JC Contemporary’s coffee shop nibbling on its surprisingly good chips and sipping a coffee after guiding a media tour. She’s relaxed, not at all jetlagged (she’s been in Hong Kong a week) and far from dour considering the subject matter. Records is part of Brennan’s ongoing multi-disciplinary project The Goods (2018 –), which examines the global looted antiquities trade – an illegal industry that trails only weapons and drug trafficking for profitability. “Museums are increasingly reflecting on their collections and how they were formed, and this is the context within which this exhibition is framed,” begins Brennan. “It’s a tricky question, and it demands a great deal of care and attention, so I’m exploring the links between these pieces, colonialism, and the modern world that’s now reckoning with these links. I’m also trying to make people think about the spaces, the blanks, and the crucial parts of the story that are missing and that no one wants to really address.” No wonder it’s an ongoing project.
The glaring difference between antiquities and cocaine and automatic rifles, of course, is that the people who trade in the latter two don’t get the shiny media treatment antiquities dealers do. There are few, if any, drug and weapons equivalents of Lara Croft (Tomb Raider), Rick O’Connell (The Mummy) or – duh – Indiana Jones. We remember Indy eyeballing a gold statue to avoid triggering a booby trap in a Peruvian tomb. We overlook the fact he’s stealing a meaningful idol from a sovereign state – easy to do when he looks like peak Harrison Ford.
“What we see in media does play a role in how we perceive archaeology and it disconnects us from the violent histories of how items get to museums,” says Brennan, who inherited her love of history and colonialism from her archaeologist great-grandfather, with a chuckle. Like it or not media creates culture and perpetuates beliefs. Brennan’s not trying to end Indiana Jones, but she would like it if we were all a bit more attuned to the provenance of those beautiful statues in a gallery. “I love museums, I’m a consumer of museums, but I think we’re just at that moment in history where we’re asking about repatriation and reparations and accountability for how these pieces got to where they are, and about the violence that went with that. We need to disrupt the traditional narrative that goes along with our impressions of how these things get into museums and re-evaluate the role of institutions.”
That traditional narrative being the one in which dotty professors pick up stones in the jungle and then hand them off to the British Museum (the “world’s museum”) for all to enjoy. Records (the third in Tai Kwun’s Breakthrough series after Alicja Kwade: Pretopia and Hu Xiaoyuan: Veering) incorporates sculpture, works on paper and film – 2022’s An Excavation, about an archaeological dig in Puglia, and the newly commissioned companion Siticulosa – with input from archaeologists, geologists and tombaroli (tomb raiders) to produce a more nuanced, multi-perspective look at the issue. “Tai Kwun’s complex heritage… and Hong Kong’s longstanding role as a global centre of trade and exchange also provide a fitting context for Brennan’s exploration of cultural ownership and contested historical accounts,” adds curator Tiffany Leung. “It prompts audiences to consider the social and political implications embedded within objects and their surroundings.”
Records can be seen as a complement to films like Mati Diop’s Berlin Golden Bear winner Dahomey and Alice Rohrwacher’s La chimera (pivoting on those tombaroli), both of which dive into conversations about ownership, the ethics of preservation and the fundamental falsity of claiming people whose heritage was stolen can still engage with it, a point made vivid in Diop’s film. To suggest the ethics are tricky is an understatement. Where would the world be if the Louvre wasn’t housing Syrian artefacts in 2011? Elsewhere, the Elgin Marbles, a series of Parthenon sculptures, currently sit in the British Museum. Greece formally asked for them to be returned in 1983, to which the British responded (paraphrasing): Fuck, no. The Elgins are a prime example of those empty spaces Brennan refers to – there are physical gaps in the Parthenon display in Athens – but they also demonstrate the quagmire antiquities holders are wading in. In the case of the Louvre, it’s lucky if not right. But the fragility of the case against repatriation wobbles when you talk about a home in, oh, Europe. “The Parthenon museum is a great example. The artefacts don’t come from someplace that’s ‘unable’ to care for them or their legacy. And yet there’s a hole in the museum because the actual artefact is in the British Museum. It’s one of the ways the entire argument collapses,” states Brennan. That curiosity about the demand for artefacts – institutional and private – is still driving The Goods, and will for some time; Brennan will be delving more into the economic and commercial aspects of treasure hunting in the future, because despite what many of us think, museum stocking via looting still happens. And she’s going to stick to storytelling to provoke debate. “I think with journalists, no offence, there’s a clinical tone that can be dry, and a little bit alienating” she finishes. “There’s an emotional element to storytelling that I think connects with people across the spectrum.”
Maeve Brennan: Records
Where: JC Contemporary 3/F, Tai Kwun
Hours: Through June 8, 2025; Tuesday to Sunday, 11am-7pm
Closed: Monday
Details: Free admission