WINDHOEK-The solo exhibition by Nicola Brandt’s titled The Earth Inside, currently on at the National Art Gallery of Namibia (NAGN), is simply worth visiting.
The fact is that, you cannot ignore to at least view one of her artwork hanging on the main NAGN gallery. The exhibition is done with creativity and lots of talents.Nicola’s multimedia installation exhibition consists of video, photographs, audio, archival materials. Speaking at the opening, guest speaker, Professor Peter Katjavivi spoke highly about some of Nicola’s exhibits, an Omuherero woman’s dress and otjikaiva (head garb). He says Ovaherero women, in their traditional dresses, together with multiple layers of petticoats and otjikaiva, are rare in today’s world of fashion, and specific to women of the Ovaherero community. The use and meaning of the long dresses among Ovaherero women, has attracted several publications and interests in many lives when it comes to arts, thus it is also explored in Nicola’s exhibition, according to Katjavivi.
Nicola’s film and photographs exhibition, The Earth Inside, portrays Namibian landscapes as metaphors of trauma, loss and the scared. The film of the exhibition is widely documenting Germans when they committed genocide and waged war against the Herero and the Nama people of south and central Namibia between 1904 and 1908. In the exhibition, Brandt attempts to highlight particular counter-narratives in relationship to the painful past, and reflects on place, and the role of photography in shaping the perception of the Ovaherero history. She also creates vignettes that reveal three parallel lives in a small coastal town where by Ovaherero women used to make their living from tourists taking pictures of themselves in the traditional dresses.
“Installation of photographs with landscapes dominating, alongside a collection of archival a collection of archival images, emphasizes how images and objects expose particular value system. As much as we read images, images read us. The installation reflects on the origin of attitudes that underpin the land issue, which was at the heart of the war of 1904 to 1909, and which remains unresolved today,” explains Nicola.
Caption: Agustus Komesho viewing Nicola Brandt’s solo exhibition titled The Earth Inside which opened last Thursday at the National Art Gallery of Namibia (NAGN).
Picture: Exhibition
By Pinehas Nakaziko