About the project
Czechs and the Colonial World: Design and Visual Culture since 1848 is a research project funded by an EXPRO Grant from the Grant Agency of the Czech Republic and led by Matthew Rampley at Masaryk University, Brno (from 1 January 2025 to 31 December 2029). The research team consists of the Principal Investigator, 5 research fellows and two PhD students.
What is the relevance of debates over decolonization to the understanding of Czech art, design and visual culture since the mid-nineteenth century?
From popular images of ‘exotic’ peoples to collecting artifacts and borrowing motifs in architecture and design, Czechs have long engaged with global cultures. Criticisms of colonial attitudes and practices are usually made of large European empires; how pertinent are they to the Czech case? The project examines how Czechs became involved in and sought to understand non-European societies and cultures. It also considers how such encounters were shaped by and also informed Czech conceptions of identity. It analyses the role of political and ideological contexts of Czech society in shaping such representations, and how attitudes and representations developed during the period studied by the project.
