Greetings from Kiautschoustraße (2024)

Following Germany’s loss of its colonies after World War I, a “collective amnesia” has obscured its colonial past. Yet, traces of this history remain embedded in Germany's urban spaces, where street names still glorify brutal colonizers, colonial wars, and former colonial holdings.

Inspired by postcards colonizers sent home with “greetings” from colonized lands, Charlotte Ming sends her own postcards from Berlin streets still named after Germany’s colonial ambitions in China. Featuring night-time photographs of these streets captured by Yangkun Shi, the series aims to invert the colonial gaze and confront the remnants of colonialism through a migrant perspective.

A participatory invention was staged at Pekinger Platz in Berlin, which commemorates German suppression of the Boxer Rebellion. Ming shared the history behind the surrounding street names and the colonial gaze embedded in those old postcards, and invited participants to write their own postcards reflecting on their experiences with migration and borders, which were mailed at the end of the intervention.