Malagasy art on the move: Materiality, home displays, and problems in decolonizing Christianity

Abstract

This article explores how white US Christians’ home displays, including their decorative presentation of paintings, small sculptures, and other memorabilia of foreign travel, play a critical role in representing imperial geographies. Drawing upon long-term ethnographic research on the current aid partnership between Lutherans in the US and Madagascar, which stems from American Lutheran mission work in southern Madagascar (1888–2004), the article studies the relationship of contemporary white Minnesotans’ home displays about Madagascar with more historically-established projects of colonial knowledge production. The visual dimensions of materiality have been significant for building traces and imaginaries of far-flung places for home or metropole audiences in Christian colonization. Thus, by placing theories of Christian souvenirs and devotional objects in dialogue with work on Christian colonialism, the author examines home displays as a lesser-considered aspect of the colonial project in the metropole and considers the problems they raise for contemporary efforts to decolonize Christianity.