Shapes of Shelter

A collaborative exhibition between artists from Namibia and Germany

The exhibition Shapes of Shelter deals with the concept of safe spaces. The term “safe space” has its origins in the movements of the 1960s in the USA and refers to a place where people who feel excluded in the prevailing society can find safety. To this day, it refers to underground clubs, hide- and hangouts or entire neighbourhoods that transform themselves at night and offer a place of community.

The multi-media artists Maria Mbereshu and Janina Totzauer – from Namibia and Germany respectively – create their very own “Safe Space” in The Project Room over several weeks. The bidirectional discussion about their common colonial past and their two situations as women from different global hemispheres flow directly into the textile patterns created on site. Symbolic protection rituals and talismans are transferred into textiles and assembled into a huge carpet. The walls are adorned with Totzauer’s “Isles of Exile” – small multifunctional tents that may serve the viewer as secret places of escapism. Positioned in between, Mbereshu’s abstract textile patterns directly refer to her experiences as a woman, paying tribute to womanhood in all its beauty.

On the evening of 6 December, we will have the opportunity to listen to three outstanding speakers in their fields at the

“Intimate Carpet”. Hermien Elago, Adriano Visagie and Natache Iilonga will summarise their current heart projects in short 20-minute slots. There will be time for questions, drinks and snacks during the non-hierarchical gathering on the carpet.

Dates:

Residency and artists’ time together at The Project Room: 21 November - 6 December, open to visitors daily from 10:00 to 13:00 and 15:00 to 18:00

Exhibition opening: 29 November, 18:00

Exhibition ends in February

Intimate Carpet Talks: 6 December, 18:00

The Project Room - Namibia www.theprojectroom.com.na

Isles of Exile by Janina Totzauer

Maria Mbereshu

ABOUT THE IMAGES:

The artists met in June 2022 at the joint online residency of the .lab collective on the theme of postcolonial exchange. Since then, they realised several collaborative textile artworks and exhibited them under the title “To the Land” in Munich and at Moos Space in Berlin. In 2022, Totzauer visited Mbereshu in Windhoek and they came up with the idea of a joint residency and exhibition at The Project Room.

Maria Mbereshu (born 1984 in Uvhungu-Vhungu, Rundu), earned a Higher Diploma in Visual Arts from the University of Namibia in 2013, including Fashion and Textile Studies, as well as Visual Culture. Mbereshu attended the Baker’s Bay Artists’ Retreat, held in Oranjemund, in 2022. Working with symbols drawn from her Sambyu culture as well as the banal everyday, Mbereshu works with repetition, creating new forms in fields of abstract shapes. She is constantly experimenting with different materials to express ideas around domesticity and the home. Mbereshu’s work has been showcased at various exhibitions locally and internationally, including the following: Education, Arts, and Culture Conference Exhibition, NAGN, 2022; To the Land ll, Percil Forest Munich (group exhibition), 2022; Cross-Cultural Collaboration, Germany/Namibia (virtual residency) ~dotlab, 2021; #WhatsYourStory, COVID-19 Project, NAGN, 2020; Bank Windhoek Triennial, NAGN, 2020; Reflect: Namibia after 30 years of independence, NAGN, 2018; Piece of Heaven Exhibition, Gallery Hamara, University of Lapland and fringe festival, Australia, 2017; Werah Café and Gallery, Rundu, 2017; Textures and Textiles on Fabric, NAGN, 2017; Booth Exhibition, NAGN, 2013; Land Matters in Art, Namibian Art Project, NAGN, 2010; UNAM Annual Student Exhibition, NAGN and FNCC.

Janina Totzauer (born 1988 in Munich, Germany) is a German media artist. Her studies in media arts at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich, the University of Cape Town in South Africa and the Universidad Nácional Autónoma de Mexico in Mexico City nourished her interest in human rituals in all corners of the world. Over the years, her studies have focused on cross-cultural and interspecies research. In 2020, Totzauer graduated as a master student under Prof. Julian Rosefeldt at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich. The Steiner Scholarship took her to southern Mozambique, where she compared the orally transmitted mysticism of the dead in the area with that of her homeland in the rural Alpine region. Awarded the BBK’s Debutant Prize and the City of Munich’s Visual Arts Scholarship in 2021, Totzauer produced her videos “Omega to Alpha” and “Into Ur”, which take their inspiration from death rituals in Mozambique and Germany. Totzauer’s sculptural and audiovisual work has been exhibited internationally, including during the Cinema Galleggiante film festival in Venice, at the Karşı Sanat in Istanbul or the TwentyFifty Gallery in Cape Town. Since 2018, Totzauer has been co-curator of the AlmResidency, an annual artist residency in the Bavarian foothills of the Alps. In 2019 and 2020, she co-curated and directed the illegally occupied ille galerie in Munich. At the end of 2020, Totzauer founded the studio offspace ArtLabTofo in Praia do Tofo, Mozambique.

From left: Janina Totzauer and Maria Mbereshu