Fred Kuwornu

With the film We Were Here. The Untold Story of Black Africans in Renaissance Europe, which was shown with great success in 2024 at the central pavilion of the 60th International Art Biennale in Venice, the Museum of Art and Cultural History Schloss Gottorf continues its series Performing History. The 53-minute film, which is shown in the south wing of the castle (2nd floor), highlights the overlooked presence of African and black people in Renaissance Europe and emphasizes their representation in masterpieces by some of the most famous artists of the era.

How did they come to Europe? Why were they portrayed? Were they really all servants or slaves? If the black faces depicted in these Renaissance masterpieces could speak, what would they tell us? Fred Kudjo Kuwornu, who created a German translation of his film for the Gottorf project, is an Afro-Italian and American, socially engaged artist, filmmaker, and scholar based in New York.