Creative artists inspired by the process of healing in making the ‘Dance of the Rubber Tree’ artwork come to life
Artist Nashilongweshipwe Muushanndja, also known by his stage name ‘Tschukutschuku’ recently used the services of local designers, Turipamwe for a special collaborative project.
The project entailed Turipamwe creating artwork for Tschukutschuku album titled; Ondaanisa yo pOmudhime (Dance of the Rubber Tree).
The Turipamwe group in a statement said for the project they took inspiration from the process of healing, because healing requires you to self reflect, acknowledge all the different layers that contribute to the present you.
“Acknowledging our ancestors, their past traumas, victories and all, therefore capturing all that with the final artwork required some out of the box thinking and experimenting with different techniques,” they added.
Turipamwe said they think of this project as a mixed media art piece, which consist of original photography reminiscent of the archival images as well as handwritten text used in the title and track list.
“We also scanned an actual mixed media art piece by Tuli Mekondjo which is approximately 2.5m wide, even though digitizing such a large piece turned out to be a challenge that required its own project management but with team effort it all came together seamlessly,” they explained.
For the team they said this was one of those dream projects, where the client practically gave them creative free rein and they had a lot of fun working on it. “We would like to thank Nashilongweshipwe Muushanndja for this opportunity and collaboration,” they concluded.
Ondaanisa yo pOmudhime is an imagined dance devised at Omudhinme, a shrub critically useful for erasure used to cleanse and burn up colonial archives. Omudhime is an archive in itself and the repertoire around it is archive too.
According to Muushanndja the Album is a Southern African train of struggle songs, a labour of love from Namibia, Zimbabwe, Congo, Brazzaville, South Africa a fire for social justice.
