REVEALING FOR HEALING W
ith a father as an ambassador to Namibia, Isabel Katjavivi was exposed to politics early on in life. This is what led her to study international relations, before visual art called to her – the unspoken conversation that needed to be had.
Drawing from her cultural history, her family history and a past that needs to be seen, looked at and thereby healed, Isabel developed a narrative art piece. Created with the blessing of her elders, it speaks of the damage, burial and lack of memorialisation of the Herero genocide. The installation piece, titled “The Past is not Buried”, won her first place at the 2017 Bank Windhoek Triennial and is a demonstration of how art can reflect society’s scars, opening a conduit for dialogue. “My dad’s always been very involved with the genocide, getting the story out and also dealing with the reparations, so it’s always been a topic in our household. That sparked an idea. We went on a journey to different locations and it’s just shocking. If you go to places where things happened, you see graves of the ones who were fighting instead of the indigenous people.” It was these visits to sites of horrific acts of violence against Namibian people that sparked Isabel’s idea to create a piece of art that speaks to the unearthing of these pieces of our history. Collecting sand from the Waterberg Ohamakari, the poisoned water holes at Ozombu Zovindimba (where the Hereros gathered before crossing the desert to Botswana) and Ondunduvahi (the manmade hill where the extermination order was read out 2 October 1904), Isabel used nature intertwined with history to tell the story so needing to be told. The story is that of a woman, buried and her body being uncovered. According to Isabel: “This woman represents all those who have died during the uprising and genocide and have never been laid to rest. She is one grain of sand in the process of memorialisation of this history that needs to take place. Across East, Central and Southern Namibia there are sites of slaughter where battles took place, where water holes were poisoned, where people were hung, imprisoned and exterminated between 1904 and 1908. Most of those who died were not buried and their bones still litter the land.
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