Oscar Santillán explores the origins and power of knowledge. He removed the ink from Cosmos – Alexander von Humboldt's influential nineteenth-century book – and transformed it into a fragile miniature planet that rests on the empty pages. The work responds to the scientific order within the collection and questions where knowledge originates. Whereas Von Humboldt and missionary brother Berchmans sought to understand the world by collecting, naming and extracting, Santillán reverses this process. Lost Star questions the source of knowledge production and reminds us that even the seemingly neutral collections of the Missiemuseum are imbued with colonial, scientific power structures.
Discover this work for yourself in our museum, on display until 1 March 2026.
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