Ovizire • Somgu
From where do we speak?
The exhibition presents performances, multimedia video installations, photo collages and historical photographs that deal with the complexity of Germany’s and Namibia’s entangled history. Using the museum’s photographic holdings from the German colonial period in Namibia as a starting point, the artists Vitjitua Ndjiharine, Nicola Brandt and Nashilongweshipwe Mushaandja and the historian Ulrike Peters approach the shadows and continuities of colonial (visual) histories from different perspectives. The focus is on questioning the colonial gaze, genocide and the polyphony of memory cultures.
A collaboration between the University of Hamburg, Prof. Dr. Jürgen Zimmerer and the Museum am Rothenbaum, with the support of the Gerda Henkel Foundation. The exhibition is funded by the Elbkulturfonds of the Hamburg Ministry of Culture and Media.
"Ovizire • Somgu: From where do we speak?" continued...
“From Where Do We Speak?” is an ongoing art and history project that emerged from the creative collaboration between artists and historians in Namibia and Germany for the exhibition “Ovizire • Somgu: From Where Do We Speak?” (2018). After the exhibition was also shown at the National Art Gallery in Namibia in 2019, artists Vitjitua Ndjiharine and Mushaandja Nashilongweshipwe organised a series of art and history workshops in Namibia in 2020, that used the MARKK’s photographic holdings as a starting point in an effort to reclaim the past through research and interdisciplinary artistic practices. The results of the workshops were documented in a physical and online exhibitions.
Click here for the website of the project.