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Local artist goes beyond the borders with ‘unearthing’ exhibition

Local artist goes beyond the borders with ‘unearthing’ exhibition

Local artist, Isabel Katjavivi opened up her exhibition ‘unearthing’ at the Goethe-Institut Johannesburg gallery last week.

The exhibition which explores sites of trauma during the colonial era and creates a response to commemorate the ancestors, will run until February 2020.

Katjavivi uses the earth, exploring the soil as an entity that retains memory and stands witness and uses the invocation by James Baldwin, that ‘All your buried corpses now begin to speak’ as a call for a reckoning with histories left in the land.

Unearthing is an extension to Katjavivi’s 2018 exhibition, ‘They tried to bury us’ at the National Art Gallery, which created a scene of remembrance to those killed in the Ovaherero and Nama Genocides in Namibia.

Unearthing include voices of the descendants and connects to the loss of land and the current realities caused by the unresolved resonances of the genocides. The exhibition is the second exhibition in the series Izwe Plant Praxis, curated by MadeYouLook is being accompanied by a discursive programme.


 

About The Author

Mandisa Rasmeni

Mandisa Rasmeni has worked as reporter at the Economist for the past five years, first on the entertainment beat but now focussing more on community, social and health reporting. She is a born writer and she believes education is the greatest equalizer. She received her degree in Journalism at the Namibia University of Science and Technology (NUST) in June 2021. . She is the epitome of perseverance, having started as the newspaper's receptionist in 2013.

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