While working in the Research & Development at Het Nieuwe Istituut, Janilda Bartolomeu expanded her research on spectrality within colonial contexts. A longstanding fascination, which found one of its outlets through the institute’s overarching And Other Spectres research project. Bartolomeu created the third interpretation of this project titled Colonial Spectres.

The starting point of Colonial Spectres was the speculation that the Dutch colonial elite brought haunted objects back to the Netherlands from Dutch-occupied Indonesia, coupled with a close reading of Dutch writer Louis Couperus’ 1900 novel De Stille Kracht (The Hidden Force). The aim of this three-part series was to develop a cultural reading of the spectres which, in concrete form and as memories, are interwoven with bodies, material spaces and objects in Indonesia and the Netherlands. These themes were examined from the perspective of object collections, spectral tropicalism, pre-colonial folklore and early 20th-century occultism. In this programme, the colonial spirits took centre stage and were the conduits of de-colonial narratives.

This research was accompanied by the Haunted (2021) moving image installation which was exhibited at Het Nieuwe Instituut’s ‘Temporary House of Home’ exhibition from 4 July 2021 to 29 May 2022.