page_title: Human zoo
section_title: 1940s to the present
hierarchical_section_title: Human zoo / 1940s to the present
caption_attribution_description: English: As part of the 100 year celebration of the Norwegian constitution in 1914, a large exhibition took place in the Frogner park in Oslo, Norway. One of the attractions was a "human zoo", the Congo village, meant to give Norwegians of that time an impression of what life in Africa was like. One hundred years later, in 2014, Mohamed Ali Fadlabi and Lars Cuzner erected what is supposed to be a copy of the Congo village, at the very same spot in Frogner park, as an art project.
context_page_description: Human zoos, also known as ethnological expositions, were 19th- and 20th-century public exhibitions of humans, usually in an erroneously labeled "natural" or "primitive" state. One-man human zoos also existed as early as the 17th century in Europe. The displays often emphasised the cultural differences between Europeans of Western civilization and non-European peoples or with other Europeans who practiced a lifestyle deemed more primitive. Some of them placed indigenous populations in a continuum somewhere between the great apes and Europeans. Ethnological expositions are now seen as highly degrading and racist, depending on the show and individuals involved.
context_section_description: A Congolese village was displayed at the Brussels 1958 World's Fair.
  In April 1994, an example of an Ivory Coast village was presented as part of an African safari in Port-Saint-Père, near Nantes, in France, later called Planète Sauvage.
  In July 2005, the Augsburg Zoo in Germany hosted an "African village" featuring African crafts and African cultural performances. The event was subject to widespread criticism. Defenders of the event argued that it was not racist since it did not involve exhibiting Africans in a debasing way, as had been done at zoos in the past. Critics argued that presenting African culture in the context of a zoo contributed to exoticizing and stereotyping Africans, thus laying the ground work for racial discrimination.
  In August 2005, London Zoo displayed four human volunteers wearing fig leaves (and bathing suits) for four days.
  In 2007, Adelaide Zoo ran a Human Zoo exhibition which consisted of a group of people who, as part of a study exercise, had applied to be housed in the former ape enclosure by day, but then returned home by night. The inhabitants took part in several exercises, and spectators were asked for donations towards a new ape enclosure.
  Also in 2007, pygmy performers at the Festival of Pan-African Music (Fespam) were housed at a zoo in Brazzaville, Congo.  Although members of the group of 20 people—among them an infant, age three months—were not officially on display, it was necessary for them to "collect firewood in the zoo to cook their food, and [they] were being stared at and filmed by tourists and passers-by".
  In August 2014, as part of the Edinburgh International Festival, South African theatre-maker Brett Bailey's show Exhibit B was performed in the Playfair Library Hall, University of Edinburgh; then in September at The Barbican in London.  This explored the nature of Human Zoos and raised much controversy both amongst the performers and the audiences.
  With a view to tackling the morality of Human Zoo exhibits, 2018 saw the poster exhibition, Putting People on Display, tour Glasgow School of Art, the University of Edinburgh, the University of Stirling, the University of St Andrews and the University of Aberdeen.  Additional posters were added to a selection from the French ACHAC's exhibition, Human Zoos: the Invention of the Savage, in relation to the Scottish dimension in hosting such shows.
caption: A modern replica of the 1914 Congo village exhibition in Oslo (2014)
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