Lou-Poko Savadogo

As restitutions accelerate across the Netherlands – particularly at the Wereldmuseum Leiden – a quiet but urgent question emerges: what becomes of the museum after the objects have departed? What can be done with emptied display cases, orphaned plinths, and exhibition architectures designed to show what is no longer there?

For Lou-Poko Savadogo, absence is not a void but an active condition – one that invites a fundamental rethinking of exhibition formats and how museum spaces are inhabited. During her residency at NIAS, she develops Turn a Blind Eye, a research-creation project focused on this after-restitution moment, in which objects leave the museum but their display structures remain. Through fieldwork in Amsterdam and Leiden, she documents recently reconfigured spaces and develops a series of experimental installations that question the museum as an architecture of the gaze. Bringing together her artisanal practice with critical reflection on museography, she seeks to transform these inherited structures into tools of critique and hospitality.