His approach is at once analytical and poetic, theoretical and sensory, serious and playful. In response to a missing african headrest, Mekonnen has collected dreams – none of which belong to the collection – and made them audible in an immersive installation where the visitors are invited to sleep into these dreams. He has searched the archive for objects that were once edible, and from this research developed a dinner performance and a film. In his mixed-media installations, films, and photographs, theoretical inquiry becomes sensory experience – and the most rigorous response to loss can also be the most unexpected, the most tender, and at times the most joyful. Visitors are invited to see absence as not as lack – but as a beginning.

The exhibition is made possible through a Gerda Henkel Fellowship.

Together, they will discuss the ideas and artistic research processes behind the exhibition.

Mekonnen’s approach begins with a radical gesture by turning away from displaying artefacts from the museum’s collection. Instead, he foregrounds absence—what is missing, displaced, or withheld.

The conversation will explore how Mekonnen proposes alternative ways of engaging with the RJM-collection that moves beyond conventional ethnographic display. In his work, he introduces acts such as cooking, listening, and dreaming as curatorial tools—gestures that shift the encounter with the museum from passive viewing to active participation. In this context, absence becomes something that can be experienced, embodied, digested and transformed.

Snoep and Mekonnen will discuss the broader institutional framework of the museum and how ethnographic museums can respond to the colonial entanglements of their collections by opening new forms of engagement.

At the center of the discussion are questions around absence, voids, memory, institutional structures, and the role museums can play critically reflecting on their own histories and forms of knowledge production.

This Talk is conceived as an open informal exchange. Participants are warmly invited to participate in the conversation, ask questions, and engage directly with Yohannes Mulat Mekonnen and Nanette Snoep about how absence, as both a concept and a method, can reshape our understanding of the ethnological museum, the archive, and ourselves.

Note: Admission is only possible until 6 p.m.

Admission fee: ticket for the exhibition plus €2.

Can a Museum Be a Place for a Psychoanalytic Session?
At the RJM: absolutely.

Dive into Another Person’s Dream. Lose fragments. Invent memories.
And perhaps leave with a story that is no longer entirely your own.

with Ethiopian psychoanalytic candidate Suraphel Mathewos Alemu

During the weekend of June 13 and 14, Yohannes Mulat Mekonnen’s dream installation invites visitors to encounter a psychoanalyst in the middle of the museum.

Visitors listen to dreams once dreamt by strangers. Afterwards, they enter into conversation with Suraphel Mathewos Alemu, who receives visitors inside the exhibition WE ARE WHAT WE ARE NOT.

But dreams cannot be held still. Details disappear, scenes shift, memories blend with imagination. Slowly, another person’s dream begins to feel partly like your own. Part listening session, part psychoanalytic encounter, part performative experiment, the installation explores how memory is constantly reshaped through selection, omission, fantasy, and reconstruction. And perhaps museums are not so different from dreams. They too are built from fragments. From missing pieces. From stories rearranged long after the moment has passed.

For one weekend, the museum transforms into something unfamiliar: half archive, half dreamscape, half psychoanalytic couch.

Bookable sessions on June 13 and 14, 2026

Registration via email at rjm-veranstaltungen@stadt-koeln.de

Price: €15

The exhibition focuses on museum objects that are no longer part of the RJM collection, thereby making absence tangible and experienceable as a space for reflection, memory, and imagination.

Through “Eat a Museum,” the museum becomes the setting for a special culinary experience. In the exhibition space, guests are invited to take a seat and enjoy a carefully curated three-course menu inspired by the collection and its missing objects.

Eating, tasting, exchange, and conversation come together in a shared experience that opens new perspectives on museums and collections.

For more information about the exhibition, please follow the link on our website:

About the curator: Yohannes Mulat Mekonnen is a multidisciplinary artist and visual anthropologist. He is currently a Visual Anthropology Fellow at the University of Bonn and a Gerda Henkel Research Fellow at the Rautenstrauch-Joest Museum (RJM).

Important note: The three-course menu is not vegetarian and might include both meat and fish. Drinks are included.

Tickets: €30 plus fee via Rausgegangen (bookable soon)