Through video, photography, drawing and installation, Orlow constructs an archaeology of absence, in which restitution becomes an ethic of responsibility and respect, a continual practice of listening and reintegration of what the Western world has silenced.
Among the various sections of the exhibition, Reading Wood (Backwards) stands out as a precise investigation of colonial vestiges embedded in scientific practices and Western knowledge systems.
The theme of restitution – and its absence – runs through other pieces as well. The Benin Project (2007) directly addresses the theft of the Benin Bronzes (seized by the British in 1897), challenging museum narratives that uphold colonial logic under the guise of conservation.
The notion that violence does not vanish in a single moment but reverberates, branches out and infiltrates the present resonates in works such as 1942 (Poznan), in which Orlow revisits an old synagogue in Poland that was turned into a swimming pool under the Nazi regime.
