Nicola Brandt brings 'The Earth Inside'

Nicola Brandt’s exhibition ‘The Earth Inside’ at the National Art Gallery of Namibia is the artist’s first solo show. The multimedia installation consists of video, photographs, audio, archival materials and found objects. It is widely documented that between the years 1904 and 1908 Germany committed genocide against the Herero and the Nama peoples of south and central Namibia. In ‘The Earth Inside’ Brandt attempts to highlight particular counter-narratives and blind spots in relationship to this painful past, and reflects on place and on the role of photography in shaping the perceptions of this history. The exhibition opens tomorrow night at 18:00 and will be on show until August 23. In her post-documentary approach to film, the artist creates vignettes that reveal three parallel lives in a small coastal town. A Herero woman makes her living from tourists taking photos of her in her traditional dress. On her way to work, she walks past Herero 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 at the NAGN. The artist Nicola Brandt is based in London and Namibia and is due to complete her doctorate in Fine Art at the University of Oxford this year. She creates films, photography and installations that explore stories and personal histories. She is interested in how places, objects and images carry fragmented references and memories that in both direct and unintentional ways influence our ideas and shape our lives. Professor Peter Katjavivi will be the guest speaker at the opening of the exhibition. Katjavivi was one of the key players in the struggle for Namibia’s liberation. Since independence he has been involved in Namibia’s political life as diplomat and parliamentarian. Katjavivi is the author of ‘A History of Resistance in Namibia’. WINDHOEK STAFF REPORTER