Xi “Títílayọ̀” Jin, doctoral candidate in African Cultural Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and inaugural Restitution and Reparation Fellow, will present “Contrapuntal Objects: Rethinking Restitution Beyond the Original” on Wednesday, December 10, 2025, from 12:30 to 2:30 PM at The Africa Institute Auditorium (location map). The lecture will examine the politics, narratives, and postcolonial frameworks that shape the restitution of African cultural objects in global museums.
The lecture is part of the Restitution and Reparation: Africa and the Post-Colonial Condition Fellowship, hosted by The Africa Institute at Global Studies University in collaboration with the Open Society Foundations. The fellowship supports scholars and practitioners engaged in restitution and repatriation, and applications for the Fall 2026 fellowship are open until April 1, 2026.
This lecture uses the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art’s recent Benin Bronzes exhibition as a lens for examining how global museums currently narrate restitution. By placing this exhibition in dialogue with the 2024–2025 African art exhibition at Tsinghua University Art Museum, the talk highlights how institutions frame “objects,” “culture,” and “collaboration,” and how these framings continue to anchor meaning in origins, lineage, and return. Such narratives often obscure the enduring colonial logics and postcolonial power asymmetries, even when they claim “repair” or “new beginnings.”
Adapting Edward Said’s contrapuntal reading to restitution debates, the lecture proposes a method for identifying competing claims and the institutional recentering of authority that can hide beneath inclusive rhetoric. It argues that decolonizing museum practice requires attending to tensions, dissonances, and power imbalances rather than seeking tidy resolutions. A contrapuntal approach makes visible which voices are amplified, which are muted, and how celebratory multicultural language can recentralize authority even while appearing inclusive.
To ground this argument, the lecture revisits two 1970s episodes involving objects classified as “replicas”: Wole Soyinka’s pursuit of the Ori Olokun head and the creation of the FESTAC mask. Although replicas sit low within colonial hierarchies of authenticity, these cases show that, at moments of political rupture and negotiation, they acquired new significance through the resistant energies they activated. Their trajectories expose contradictions within the very idea of “the original” and complicate contemporary expectations that restitution simply restores what was lost.
Xi “Títílayọ̀” Jin is a Ph.D. candidate in African Cultural Studies, with a minor in Visual Cultures, at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and the inaugural Restitution and Reparation: Africa and the Post-Colonial Condition Fellow (Fall 2025) at The Africa Institute. Her research examines the political and spiritual afterlives of African cultural objects across literature, cinema, museum studies, decolonial thought, and Afro-Asian exchange. Her dissertation, If the Object Could Run, explores African responses to restitution through literary, visual, and curatorial practices, and her recent publication appears in Entangled Histories and Ambivalent Feelings: China–Africa Encounters in Culture and Media (Routledge, 2025). Read more.
Philathia Bolton serves as Associate Professor of African and African Diaspora Literature and Cultural Studies at The Africa Institute and was the inaugural Toni Morrison Senior Fellow (2023–2024). Her work examines African American literature, Black feminist theory, and the cultural and political legacies of the civil rights movement. Read more.
Xi “Títílayọ̀” Jin, doctoral candidate in African Cultural Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and inaugural Restitution and Reparation Fellow, will present “Contrapuntal Objects: Rethinking Restitution Beyond the Original” on Wednesday, December 10, 2025, from 12:30 to 2:30 PM at The Africa Institute Auditorium (location map). The lecture will examine the politics, narratives, and postcolonial frameworks that shape the restitution of African cultural objects in global museums.
Xi “Títílayọ̀” Jin, doctoral candidate in African Cultural Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and inaugural Restitution and Reparation Fellow, will present “Contrapuntal Objects: Rethinking Restitution Beyond the Original” on Wednesday, December 10, 2025, from 12:30 to 2:30 PM at The Africa Institute Auditorium (location map). The lecture will examine the politics, narratives, and postcolonial frameworks that shape the restitution of African cultural objects in global museums.
The lecture is part of the Restitution and Reparation: Africa and the Post-Colonial Condition Fellowship, hosted by The Africa Institute at Global Studies University in collaboration with the Open Society Foundations. The fellowship supports scholars and practitioners engaged in restitution and repatriation, and applications for the Fall 2026 fellowship are open until April 1, 2026.
This lecture uses the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art’s recent Benin Bronzes exhibition as a lens for examining how global museums currently narrate restitution. By placing this exhibition in dialogue with the 2024–2025 African art exhibition at Tsinghua University Art Museum, the talk highlights how institutions frame “objects,” “culture,” and “collaboration,” and how these framings continue to anchor meaning in origins, lineage, and return. Such narratives often obscure the enduring colonial logics and postcolonial power asymmetries, even when they claim “repair” or “new beginnings.”
Adapting Edward Said’s contrapuntal reading to restitution debates, the lecture proposes a method for identifying competing claims and the institutional recentering of authority that can hide beneath inclusive rhetoric. It argues that decolonizing museum practice requires attending to tensions, dissonances, and power imbalances rather than seeking tidy resolutions. A contrapuntal approach makes visible which voices are amplified, which are muted, and how celebratory multicultural language can recentralize authority even while appearing inclusive.
To ground this argument, the lecture revisits two 1970s episodes involving objects classified as “replicas”: Wole Soyinka’s pursuit of the Ori Olokun head and the creation of the FESTAC mask. Although replicas sit low within colonial hierarchies of authenticity, these cases show that, at moments of political rupture and negotiation, they acquired new significance through the resistant energies they activated. Their trajectories expose contradictions within the very idea of “the original” and complicate contemporary expectations that restitution simply restores what was lost.
Xi “Títílayọ̀” Jin is a Ph.D. candidate in African Cultural Studies, with a minor in Visual Cultures, at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and the inaugural Restitution and Reparation: Africa and the Post-Colonial Condition Fellow (Fall 2025) at The Africa Institute. Her research examines the political and spiritual afterlives of African cultural objects across literature, cinema, museum studies, decolonial thought, and Afro-Asian exchange. Her dissertation, If the Object Could Run, explores African responses to restitution through literary, visual, and curatorial practices, and her recent publication appears in Entangled Histories and Ambivalent Feelings: China–Africa Encounters in Culture and Media (Routledge, 2025). Read more.
Philathia Bolton serves as Associate Professor of African and African Diaspora Literature and Cultural Studies at The Africa Institute and was the inaugural Toni Morrison Senior Fellow (2023–2024). Her work examines African American literature, Black feminist theory, and the cultural and political legacies of the civil rights movement. Read more.
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