23.09.2025
Kunstbibliothek
The programme is set! Together with the Deutsches Historisches Museum, the Kunstbibliothek, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin is organising the international symposium “Tenacious Tropes: Colonial Narratives in Visual Advertising” on 21 and 22 November 2025 in the lecture hall at the Kulturforum. Presentations will be given in German or English, participation is free of charge after registration.
Advertising pervades the modern world. For over 150 years, we have been flooded daily with colourful images designed to encourage consumption. They burn themselves into our collective memory, ready to be recalled and reactivated. Constantly quoting itself, image-based advertising perpetuates visual patterns that often go back to their beginnings in the 19th century – to an era that was characterised by imperialist thought and action in Europe and North America. From the play with a longing for ‘exoticism’ to ‘chocolate magicians’ and other discriminatory stereotypes, many advertising motifs have persisted to this day as remnants of a colonialist visual language.
The two-day symposium traces the origins of colonial narratives in visual advertising from the heyday of colonialism around 1900 to their developments in the 20th and 21st centuries. From a wealth of exciting proposals received in response to our call for papers, the scientific team has now selected fourteen contributions from international guests. In addition to topics related to Germany, they present perspectives from India, Cameroon, Korea, Brazil, France, Sweden, the Netherlands, and other countries. In 20-minute presentations, the experts from the fields of history, art and cultural history, urban planning, media studies, and design analyse evidence of (post)colonial contexts in image-based advertising from the 1860s to the 2020s. The content ranges from “stereotypography”, exoticism in AI images, or the marketing of food, travel, and houseplants, to the instrumentalization of Black bodies.
Registration until 18 November 2025 (or as long as places are available)
by e-mail to kolonialnarrative[at]smb.spk-berlin.de
Venue: Lecture Hall, Kulturforum
Johanna-und-Eduard-Arnhold-Platz / Matthäikirchplatz, 10785 Berlin
The symposium “Tenacious Tropes: Colonial Narratives in Visual Advertising” is organised by the Collection of Graphic Design at the Kunstbibliothek, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, and the Deutsches Historisches Museum, in cooperation with the Stiftung Stadtmuseum.
![[Übersetzen "english"]](/_assets/1d0366c63cd43cd3f1b002fd716e1a44/Images/placeholder_lazyloadFullHD.png)