Windhoek
Veteran Namibian photographer Lukas Amakali will open his ninth solo exhibition, entitled DNA Strands, at The Village Opera House Street in Windhoek on Wednesday.
The exhibition will showcase a selection of his latest works depicting the artist’s distinctive style of double-exposure photography. The show reflects the artist’s view of a life intertwined with complexity and diversity, of a negotiation between darkness and light.
Born in Windhoek in 1976, Lukas Amakali graduated from John Muafangejo Art Centre in 1999. Subsequently he continued studying photography, initially analogue film with Djunior Svane and later creative digital photography with Tony Figueira.
In 2007 Lukas Amakali held his first solo exhibition of graphic works and published an accompanying anthology of poems. It was only after another course in analogue photography that he held his first black and white photography exhibition in 2010.
In recent years, Amakali has been experimenting with double-exposure photography – a process of recording two superimposed images on the same film twice to produce a special effect.
In this show, the artist presents a holistic approach through which to view the world pluralistically, with blurry boundaries and ordinary everyday experiences. Combining elements of Oshiwambo culture with urban dynamics, the artist creates other ways of seeing and seeks to counteract existing power imbalances.
The hazy, out-of-focus, ghost-like images allude to the omnipotent presence of the Other. The work represents the ambiguity of our current epoch and hints at inter-dimensional worlds.
Amakali allows for all the shades of grey to play out against the crisp black and white backdrops. The exhibition will be opened by Djunior Svane.