From Ndakalako Shilongo’s recent screening of her riverside ‘Momeya’ to last month’s oceanic Topnaar tale presented to ovation at the National Theatre of Namibia, water is what grounds folklore, theatric forgotten history and a visual art exhibition with a tongue-twisting title. In the second volume of ‘The fish that sees its water is getting shallow cannot be stranded’, curator Nashilongweshipwe Mushaandja presents a vivid catch of photography, mixed media, prints, installations, performance art, documentation and sculpture at the Franco-Namibian Cultural Centre (FNCC). The result of Mushaandja’s observation of the recurrence of fish in contemporary Namibian art, the collection seeks to explore the creative allure of fish, water and water cultures and their historic expression in local art.
At the FNCC’s Simon Lumbu Gallery, the diversity of this expression is fascinatingly on display. Topical in work by Veronique Kuchekena-Chirau, Tuli Mekondjo and Shomwatala Shivute who situate their frames in the layered realities of Lüderitz, the exhibition considers the potential of water as memory and as resource. Capturing sombre images of their traditionally dressed selves, as well as ships on the sea, the photographers present their works in the shadows of traumatic colonial history and with the glare of post-colonial/neo-colonial economic extraction on the horizon.
Issues of capitalist extraction are also present in ‘Fishrot Aquarium Cleansing’, an elaborate c.