The museum project emerged out of critical scholarly engagement with theories of the museum in Africa, institutional practices, notions of the avant-garde, the role of audience in meaning making, participatory and performative art practices, art as institutional critique, and impermanent artworks. The project emerged from a critical self reflection of myPortable Hawkers Museum project (2002- 2021).  In a book chapter titled ‘Confronting the Museum: Artists’ Interventions as Critique’, I realized  that like the neo avant-garde artists who preceded me, my project failed to adequately critique the institutions of art from within. Despite that I created the Portable Hawkers Museum in order  to critique the exclusiveness, and problematic histories of cultural history museums in African through a combination of parodying certain museum practices (the collection, the taxonomy, the acquisition and loaning policies) while inverting other aspects of museum practices (the portability, the temporality, the collection of inexpensive mass produced goods), I claimed my project to be a museum. Despite how engagements such as mine enable dialogue and critique, the very idea of a museum remains entangled with the colonial project. Implied is that any project that aims to critique outdated museum practices, and the legacies of museums in Africa, that continues to call itself a ‘museum’ will fail in its institutional critique. However, in order for a critique through parody or satire to be successful, audiences must recognize what is being critiqued. This presented me with an interesting challenge: how do I critique historical conceptions of the museum, without reproducing the museum? I arrived at a new approach, the creation of an anti-museum, titled Museum, in which the word 'museum' is purposely written under erasure. To write ‘under erasure’ is a philosophic writing device proposed by Heidegger and expanded upon by Derrida. Spivak (1976, xiv) explains that to write under erasure is to write a word, cross it out, and then print both word and deletion. (Since the word is inaccurate, it is crossed out. Since it is necessary, it remains legible.)

MUSEUM is a portable ‘museum under erasure’, through which I will continue to explore and critique museum practices, and issues to do with museums in Africa. This portable MUSEUM takes the form of a collection of used suitcases (fig 5 and 6); each suitcase is thought of as a ‘room’ or wing of the museum. I am using suitcases for the obvious connotations of baggage and traveling, journeying, and also so that the MUSEUM is portable.

‘Embrace Failure’, is part of the  MUSEUM.  It is a series of artworks made with discarded trophies, purchased from thrift shops; once a symbol of achievement, now relegated to trash. Through combining these found objects in different ways, I explore the nature of achievement, what is valued and celebrated, as well as the opposite- notions of failure, and the importance of failure as a necessary step for learning and growth. The connection between failure and growth is explored more literally perhaps in the ‘room’ ‘Fail Better’ in which I water plants with academic graduation trophies made of ice. My exploration of failure, of trying and trying again, is embodied in the repetitive act of casting from molds. The use of magnifying glasses denotes the forms of scrutiny that objects are subjected to in museums. I am interested in how, like museums, the magnifying glasses both reveal and obscure vision. I hope that through these explorations this Museum might fail better than the Portable Hawkers Museum.