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Facial casts of Nias islanders, J.P. Kleiweg de Zwaan, 1910 – A Post-Colonial Simulacrum – Dutch History Exhibit – Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam – Gaia Son

© Gaia Son

© Gaia Son

Why do these men look so unhappy and violated?

After 1900, the colonial-military expansion of power in the Dutch East Indies opened it up as an unparalleled area of activity for Europeans. This also applied to the Dutch anthropologist J.P. Kleiweg de Zwaan, who conducted research on the physical characteristics of ethnic groups. During a 1910 expedition on Nias he covered the faces of a group of living men with plaster to record their appearance. Numbered casts of these plaster moulds were made in the Netherlands. – Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

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