Sarah Dornhof is a postdoctoral researcher at the Humboldt University Berlin. She received her PhD in cultural studies and works at intersections between memory studies, contemporary art, and postcolonial theory. Her current research examines relationships between art and memory practices.

MIASA Project: Contemporary Art and the Notion of Heritage

My project aims to explore ways in which contemporary art enables revision and reframing of the concept of heritage. Within a comparative framework, which includes Ghana, Morocco, and Germany, I focus on how the notion of heritage is negotiated in contemporary art discourse and practice, and how art institutions in these different places address, or respond to increasing demands for decolonizing, re/appropriating, and restituting cultural heritage. I am thus interested in the role artworks, exhibitions and cultural institutions play in opening critical, progressive and speculative approaches to heritage.

Publications (selection):

Capdepón, U. and S. Dornhof, eds. (2022) Contested Urban Spaces. Monuments, Traces and Decentered Memories. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Dornhof, S. et al., eds. (2018), Situating Global Art. Topologies - Temporalities – Trajectories. Bielefeld: Transcript. 

Dornhof, S. (2016) Alternierende Blicke auf Islam und Europa: Verletzung als Rationalität visueller Politik. München: Wilhelm Fink.

Dornhof, S., L. Kelting and N. Graeff, eds. (2016) F(r)ictions of Art. Paragrana: Internationale Zeitschrift für Historische Anthropologie. Vol. 25 (2), Berlin: De Gruyter.

Peter, F., S. Dornhof and E. Arigita, eds. (2013) Islam and the Politics of Culture in Europe: Memory, Aesthetics, Art. Bielefeld: Transcript.

Dornhof, S. and J. Moroder (2023), Video interview with M’barek Bouhchichi, L’écriture est d’abord un regard, https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCnPfXCw2-uqqD2V2qFK1Jg

Dornhof, S. “Street Art out of Time. The Asilah Arts Festival and other Entanglements of Place, Art, and Public Space, Manazir Journal, Vol. 4 (2022): Ce que l’art fait à la ville en Afrique du Nord et au Moyen-Orient. Pratiques artistiques, expressions du politique et transformations de l’espace public, ed. By M. Bonte and M. Slitine, 74-97.

Dornhof, S. (2022) “Fictions of the Contemporary. The Shifting Spaces of the Marrakech Biennale,” in: P. Larzillière (ed.), In Motion. The Global Politics of Artistic Engagement. Beyond the Arab Uprisings. Leiden: Brill, 266-289.

Dornhof, S. (2022) “Contesting Memories and the Politics of Art: Manaf Halbouni’s Monument Installation in Dresden (2017), in: N. Göle (ed.), Public Space Democracy: Performative, Visual and Normative Dimensions of Politics in a Global Age. London: Routledge, 135-147.

Dornhof, S. (2022) “Disgraced Monuments. Burying and Unearthing Lenin and Lyautey,” in: U. Capdepón and S. Dornhof (eds.), Contested Urban Space. Monuments, Traces and Decentered Memory. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 205-225.

Dornhof, S. (2021) “Crossings of Heritage, Memory, and Archives – A History of Moroccan Cinema in The Bouanani Archives,” in: Regards – revue des arts du spectacle, 26/2021 “Locating the Lost Archive of Arab Cinema”, https://journals.usj.edu.lb/regards/article/view/655.

Dornhof, S. (2021) “Flirting,” in: K. Fink and N. Siegert (eds.), Yassine Balbzioui: Identity to Rent. Bayreuth/Johannesburg: Iwalewabooks, 110-117.