Archives — official records, photographs, letters, scientific specimens — were rarely created with art in mind. When contemporary artists extract material from these collections for installation work, they gain access to powerful historical evidence, but also inherit the power relations embedded in how that material was originally collected.
What Is Archival Extraction?
Archival extraction refers to the practice of removing documents, images or objects — or more commonly, reproductions of them — from their original institutional context and recontextualising them within an artwork. This might mean projecting colonial-era photographs alongside contemporary footage, or displaying administrative records that document historical injustice.
Consent, Context and Colonial Collections
Many of the richest archives available to artists were assembled during periods of colonial expansion, often without the consent of the communities depicted. Using this material in an installation can illuminate histories that institutions have long suppressed — but it can also repeat the original extraction if descendant communities are not consulted or credited.
Artists Working With Difficult Archives
A growing number of practitioners address this tension directly, making the act of extraction itself part of the artwork: showing the archive's catalogue card alongside the image, or collaborating with communities to reinterpret material from their own perspective. This shifts the work from simply "using" an archive to actively interrogating its origins and authority.
Toward Responsible Practice
Best practice increasingly involves provenance research before material is used, formal agreements with originating communities or institutions where possible, and transparency within the artwork about where material came from and how it was obtained. None of this resolves the underlying ethical complexity, but it shifts artistic research toward accountability rather than simple appropriation.
About Dr. Mira Solheim
Dr. Mira Solheim is an art historian and writer focused on artistic research, Nordic visual culture and the intersection of art with technology and film. She writes for Artistic-Research.no on methodology, institutions and practice.