Speaking absence. Art museums, representation and knowledge creation

In my dissertation I investigate multiple absences that are at work in art museums. My understanding of absence is informed by postcolonial theory, gender studies and memory studies. Museal absence involves material and immaterial sides that are based on excluded objects and certain unwanted social identities. My case studies involve four museums of modern and contemporary art: the Ludwig Museum in Budapest, the Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin, the Kiasma Museum in Helsinki, and the Kumu Museum in Tallinn. I interrogate the creation of absence in and by those museums through taking into account the narrative, spatial and archival realms. Through the absencing of identities and positioning them as mute Others, particular local communities are deprived of a memory and a chance for self-identification in the representative realm of museums. As audience members, I consequently suggest, we need to break away from solely focusing on visuality and museal presence, and learn to read absences that museums create as well.