The paper will present the art project Les Archives Suédoises, exploring a neglected part of history by re-contextualising and reworking a hidden and dispersed archive consisting of historical glassplate negatives photographed by Swedish missionaries in the Congo 1890-1930. During the second half on the 19th century, an evangelical revival spread in Sweden. The new parishes that emerged had a deep concern for missions, and inspired by Stanley’s travels in the Congo, the church soon started sending missionaries. They brought camera equipment, and the resulting photographs were used for enticing home parishes to donate funds. Missionary lantern lectures visited chapels, schools and churches up until the sixties. For many Swedes this was their first encounter with Africa, and the images have thus had a profound influence of how Africa was imagined in Sweden. In the Congo DR on the other hand, not many photographs from the historical period remain; the colonizers controlled the technology, and the tropical climate and political turbulence has destroyed what was left. The missionaries were also very much part of a process whereby they documented the existing culture in the places where they settled – then set out to do their best to change, or even destroy it. How can we confront these types of images today, from a Swedish perspective, where there is great reluctance to look at this part of our history? And from a Congolese perspective, where the images both bear witness to the suffering of the people living through colonization, and depict old village life and traditions? We embarked on a collaborative artistic enquiry with Congolese sculptor FreddyTsimba, and created a series of site-specific installations in response to the archive, in Sweden and in the Congo, looking beyond our own context-specific histories and addressing the traumatic memory left in both nations.