As part of efforts to decolonise museums, Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven, the Netherlands, hosted an exhibition titled ‘Hidden Connections’ (Verborgen Verbanden, March-June 2024). The exhibition explored the labour conditions of contracted workers in the Deli plantations in Sumatra, in the former Dutch East Indies. Founded by Henri van Abbe, a colonial cigar manufacturer who sourced tobacco from the Deli plantations, the museum is now engaging with its colonial past. This includes working with its own colonial archives, which serves as a foundation for this exhibition. 

 

This paper offers a feminist analysis of the representation of women as slave labourers on the Deli plantations, examining the possibilities and limitations of using colonial archives to decolonise public knowledge about labour conditions in the former Dutch East Indies.