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Design and art driven by concept

At the launch of It Wasn’t Me, Niina Marjatta Turtola and the PS of the Ministry of Truth and Typography, disgust the audience in their unique signature discourse.

At the launch of It Wasn’t Me, Niina Marjatta Turtola and the PS of the Ministry of Truth and Typography, disgust the audience in their unique signature discourse.

“If there is not concept there can be no design or art” said Niina Marjatta Turtola about her exhibition that launched this week at the Omba Gallery in Windhoek. Driving home her point, the artist cum designer said she started a phantom Ministry of  Truth and Typography in 2013 to show that art can be both incisive and questioning.
Her exhibition is titled “It Wasn’t Me.”
“Design and art must be based on a concept. Form is born from the concept.
Concept can take various forms.
Thinking and the process are extremely interesting and important.
The appearance is a mirror of thinking, but not the ultimate goal or function” said Turtola trying to explain her own concepts to a incredulous audience.
She said she could not comprehend that there are no questioning activities in the art scene in Namibia, neither about arts nor about society.
“Newspapers and everyday life in Namibia are violent in different ways.” Namibians seem to take if for granted and live with it better than she, a foreigner.

 She sees Namibia as a hypnotized society that rather denies the truth than wants to approach it. “Art generally seems to be craft and meant for tourists, except for a few exceptions of course who are swimming against the stream, like she.
Turtola holds a Master’s Degree in Graphic Design, an occupation she feels is not receiving due recognition.
One of the art works is called The Hypnotized Society.
She wrote down this title on her notebook after visiting an exhibition of Bernard Tschumi, avant-garde theorist and architect, called Concept and Notation in Paris, May 2014.
 “Theoretical approach must take place.
Mostly pure commercial work can be mere visual pollution, as the client does not speak any visual language, but relies on the gut feeling, which is mostly wrong.
And the audience has to look at the big vomit of so-called design” she said.

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