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“Colours of Africa” featuring Namibian designer Frauke Stegmann

“Colours of Africa” featuring Namibian designer Frauke Stegmann

By Freeman ya Ngulu.

Cape Town-based Design Indaba, in partnership with Google Arts & Culture, has launched an online project called “Colours of Africa” featuring Namibian designer Frauke Stegmann as she laments the loss of biodiversity in Namibia.

Featuring a kaleidoscope of 60 artists from across the continent including Namibia’s own, Colous of Africa offers a bespoke online interactive experience where a browser can pick a colour and see how the artist interprets it.

A random Russian roulette style interaction can lead to a rabbit hole of intrigues as the colour black is showcased by civil engineer and entrepreneur Jefferson Krua as the the colour of protest with a depiction of Liberian women who demand an end to injustice titled “How Black Unified a Liberian Movement.

For example Yellow is described as fashion and food, as two African women use yellow to explore heritage and tradition. For her work titled “Ex-Swamp, Namibian designer Frauke Stegmann designed and installed a plaque which memorialise the loss of a once rich marshland.” The website reads, “Sixty years ago, located in what is now the city of Windhoek, the water from a natural mountain hot spring trickled down and gathered in a luxuriant marshland – stories from the 1940s still witness the nocturnal call of a thousand frogs.”

Another past collaboration between Google and Design Indaba is Africa Now, a series of annual exhibitions and curated content by Design Indaba and Google survey creative work being produced across the continent at the moment it happens.

It seeks and captures a wide breadth of creative work currently produced on the continent – from architecture, furniture and functional handmade items to fashion, technology and sustainable designs. Running through the exhibition as a common thread is that all the products and projects were designed in response to specific local conditions and African solutions to African problems.


 

About The Author

Freeman Ya Ngulu

Freeman Ngulu is an investigtor, an author and a keen entrepreneur. His speciality is data journalism for which he loves to dig deep into topics often ignored by mainstream reporting. He tweets @hobameteorite.

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