MELANIE GARLAND

artist & researcher 



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              © 2025 Melanie Garland

The Amo Salon is located in the foyer of one of the buildings of the Humboldt University in Berlin, at M_hrenstrasse 40/41 (from October 2021 Anton-Wilhelm-Amo-Strasse 40/41). The Amo Salon is currently under construction and is scheduled to open in the 2023/24 winter semester. The aim of the Amo Salon is to create a publicly accessible space in the center of Berlin that brings artists, researchers and civil society together to reflect on the genealogies of the colonial and their impact in the present and future. Our approach is intersectional and reads Amo as inspiration for reflection on various forms of classification and racialization.

The Amo Salon serves two basic functions. On the one hand, it represents a place of remembrance of the history of street renaming and urban confrontation with colonialism. Visitors* will find sources, documents and suggestions here to further reflect on this history of the present. In addition to this documentary level, the Amo-Salon also offers an interactive space for public events, workshops and artistic interventions dedicated to these Amo-inspired topics, allowing space for debate and exchange. NAWAS consciously picks up on the Berlin tradition of “salon culture” but would like to read it in a decolonial way. For us, this means creating a space that thinks of society from "its fringes", thus giving space to polytonal practices of remembering and imagining, always taking into account the global, colonial entanglement structures. Our central concern is to create a space that not only enables an exchange about past and present inequalities, but also allows the imagination of "other futures".

See also Decolonial Flânerie