New Caledonia: An Archipelago at a Crossroads

New Caledonia's tourism office promises "Paradise Awaits". The beaches and lagoons in those brochures are also customary land, governed by the custom of the Kanak, the archipelago's Indigenous people. Anthropologist Karolina Kania did fieldwork across the islands from 2014 to 2023, looking at everyday life and at the fights that start when tourism wants to build there.

This is what she brought back, set up in the Náprstek's courtyard rather than its galleries. Her photographs and accounts have been reworked by ethnologist and designer Patrycja Bulska-Wolas into a series of posters. You go behind the scenes of the Yam Festival and a customary wedding, meet the Kanak and Caldoche communities, and follow a few unexpected Czech threads to a territory still arguing over its sovereignty.

It's a photo display, not an object show. The courtyard is free, so it costs nothing to look before or after a ticketed visit to the museum inside.