On a desk of the private study collection of the Museum für Naturkunde in Berlin, an old stuffed parrot guards a vast ornithology collection. An excited young scientist reads a story on the origins of the desiccated animal for the purpose of entertaining a group of visitors: it may have been the last “speaker” of a dead Indigenous language from colonial Venezuela, or a German prince’s gift to the naturalist Alexander von Humboldt. There is no clear understanding which of these versions, if any, might be true.

Never Spoken Again: Rogue Stories of Science and Collections is an exhibition curated by David Ayala-Alfonso, and produced by Independent Curators International, that reflects on the birth of modern collections, the art institutions that sustain them and their contingent origin stories. Considering how collections organize our lives, Never Spoken Again brings together artists whose works open up a critique of material culture, iconography, and political ecologies. These practices examine not only the collected objects and the systems of distribution that facilitate their circulation but also the disciplines and subjects of study that they trade in.

Variously, the works of photography, sculpture, video, and more shed light on myths, fake currencies, war games, and the slow violence of systematic racism that historically underpin collecting practices. Together they open the field for considering our agency in how our histories and futures may be constituted otherwise.