WINDHOEK– Nicola Brandt’s to exhibit her first solo show, The Earth Inside at the National Art Gallery of Namibia next Thursday.
The multimedia installation consists of video, photographs, audio, archival materials and found objects. The Earth Inside highlights particular counter narratives and blind spots in relationship to the painful past of 1904 to 1908 when Germany committed genocide against the Ovaherero and the Nama and reflects on place, and on the role of photography in shaping the perceptions of this history.
In her post-documentary approach to film, Brandt creates vignettes that reveal three parallel lives in a small coastal town. An Omuherero woman makes her living from tourists taking photos of her in her traditional dress. On her way to work, she walks past Ovaherero and Nama mass graves. A German Namibian woman in her nineties tries to maintain her illusions about the Second World War and recalls a romantic encounter in the cemetery that lies near her home and adjacent to the unmarked graves. A woman in her twenties has returned to Namibia, the country of her birth, after years of living in Europe, and grapples with her heritage. The three stories are accompanied by large-scale video and photography triptychs of the Namibian desert coastline and its hinterland. These deceitfully beautiful, derelict landscapes contain places of historical violence. The sites are largely unmarked and their identity has been preserved primarily through personal memories and oral histories.
The exhibition, curated by Vid Simoniti, will be accompanied by a series of talks at the University of Namibia and a panel discussion. The Earth Inside will run until August 23. The additional video screening will be on Saturdays 9h00 to 14h00.
Caption: One of the pictures that will be exhibited at The Earth Inside exhibition by Nicola Brandt starting next Thursday at National Art Gallery of Namibia.
Pic: Earth Inside