Collection

Dior Thiam (1993, Cologne/DE) studied at Humboldt University in Berlin, the Academy of Visual Arts in Leipzig, and Berlin University of the Arts. She is a multidisciplinary artist who chooses her materials according to the thematic focus of her work, repeatedly drawing on archival photos, which she then processes pictorially in her works. The artist is particularly interested in the origins and visual continuities of colonial viewing habits. The long-overdue decentralization of Western perspectives is one of the aspects that Dior Thiam addresses in her work, along with questions of ownership claims and restitution of photographs taken under duress. By working with this very photographic material, the artist shows that resistance, anger, vulnerability, grief, but also humanity and beauty can be found in many of these images. Through her works, Dior Thiam encourages us to question viewing habits based on dehumanization by learning to see ourselves as active, participating individuals in the act of seeing. Dior Thiam received a STRABAG ART Award recognition prize in 2025.