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“To read the archive is to enter a mortuary; as it permits one final viewing and allows for a last glimpse of persons about to disappear into the slave hold,” wrote Saidiya Hartman, the American scholar in the acclaimed essay Venus in Two Acts. Those who reach into the archive can exhume, terrifyingly, traumatic histories of violence, dispossession and erasure. Through a new exhibition of works by Namibian artists at AVA Gallery in Cape Town, the process of reaching into the archive returns to the surface bodies that were never mourned.
Curated by artist Jo Rogge, Unmourned Bodies sits at the geographical intersections between Namibia and South Africa. Claiming as its nexus, the archive of the Namibian Arts Association (NAA)/ Arts Heritage Trust collection, this exhibition highlights the political and artistic entanglements between the two countries. Through engaging with the archive, the participating artists were invited to reflect and respond to uncovered histories relating to the conquest of German South-West Africa (Namibia) by South African forces (1914 -1915), the German genocide of Herero and Nama people (1904 - 1908), the historical link between South West African Association of Arts (SWAA) and the South African Association of Arts (SAAA), now The South African National Association for the Visual Arts (SANAVA) which is the oldest non-governmental association for visual arts in this country. In this way, the exhibition offers a framework to explore the art landscape and political history of Namibia.
The group of artists who breathed new life into the NAA archive include Maria Caley, Stephanie Conradie, Actofel Ilovu, Ju/’hoansi artists, Tangeni Kambudu, Maria Mbereshu, Tuli Mekondjo, Lynette Musukibili, Ndako Nghipandulwa, Jo Rogge and Rudolf Seibeb. A common thread among them seems to be their use of unconventional materials that upturn traditional mediums such as painting and sculpture. This is driven through the use of natural dyes, Namibian ochre, fabric paint, thread, tulle, cotton, ash, smoke, ostrich eggshell beads, glass, mirror, seeds, makalani, plastic and nails, creating an interesting interplay between hard and soft materials. Works are stitched, glued, sculpted, woven and painted - a testament to the extensive range of expression found in Namibian art. They bring about the questions of how to engage Namibian art, particularly that which is labelled “craft” or “artefact”, in a manner that does not pull the work towards the folkloric and traditional but rather towards the modern and contemporary.
Conversations around archives are fragmentary and incomplete. In academic spaces archives are discussed in theoretical terms, often beginning with Michel Focault’s reading of the archive as “the first law of what can be said”, that is to say; a system that governs how events first appear as statements. Similarly, few exhibitions confront the practical implications of archives beyond these abstract terms. A key practical component, not exclusive to this exhibition, that we have not even begun to speak about is the impact of archives on climate change. In the exhibition catalogue, Rogge notes that “archives are important”. But what does this mean in the context of a warming planet? Another critical question is what is at stake when we use resources to uphold archives that are inherently racist and exclusionary, such as the NAA archive in terms of its depiction of indigenous peoples and their cultures.
In a conversation with academic Patricia Hayes, the curator relayed an anecdote of the difficulty of ascribing authorship and ascertaining details regarding historical works in the Arts Heritage Collection, pointing to absences and erasures of San artistic contributions to the art historical canon. The inclusion of works by artists of Ju/'hoansi origins - a population of Khoisan-speaking hunter-gathers residing in northeastern Namibia and the northwestern region of Botswana – makes for an exhibition that traces art-making practices today to its earliest iterations. Made from Ostrich eggshell beads, these works depict geometric forms and patterns believed to contain narratives, guidance and council.
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