‘We will be free’ exhibition to showcase early next month
The StArt Art Gallery will be launching the, ‘We will be free’, an exhibition of local artists on 4 November at 11:00 at the Sweet Side of Thingz Cafe, which will be curated in collaboration with Nashilongweshipwe Mushaandja.
The exhibition was first opened in June in Makhanda, South Africa, and is now travelling back to Windhoek. Participating artists include Nicky Marais, Tony Figueira, Fillipus Sheehama, Namafu Amutse, Elisia Nghidishange, Maria Mbershu, Jakobina Gideon, Rachel Sakeus, Ndinomholo Ndilula, Vilho Nuumbala, Petrus Amuthenu, and Anne Lacheiner-Kuhn. “For this group exhibition, Namibian artists were asked to respond to a song of the same title by Tschuku Tschuku featuring Nesindano Namises from the album Trance !Namib Freedom Station,” they added.
They said this song is about reconciling the painful past while meditating on freedom and the future and it sings, ‘when the sun rises when the morning comes, it will be all-right’. “’We will be free’ is an imagination of what it means to practice freedom from bondage, displacement, and dispossession and the artworks on show include pieces in a wide variety of mediums including, photography, painting, printmaking, textiles and collage,” they said.
Jakobina Gideon said when she first listened to the song, it felt like an answered prayer for her ancestors, it was an acknowledgment of her own personal journey of figuring life out and the seemingly never-ending troubles that come with it. “The song being partially sung in my mother tongue, Oshiwambo, feels like my ancestors talking to me. It makes me feel seen and gives me hope depicted by the light of dawn in the lyrics of the song. ‘Ngenge etango olewu ya otashika enda nawa…….ngele kwashi otashi ka enda nawa’, meaning when the sun comes up everything will be fine.” she added.
She said her work depicts the challenges of her life as well as the aftermath of emotions, and her various states of being which are evoked by an immense sense of hope and the tranquillity of an answered prayer.
StArt Art has invited the public between 11:00 to 14:00 on 4 November to come and celebrate the opening of the exhibition with the curators and artists. “All are welcome to attend the exhibition, with free entrance,” they concluded.
