10 minutes with local taste makers

Tanya Turipamwe Stroh

They say never to meet your heroes. Whoever “they” are simply did not have worthy heroes. Consistent, transparent and authentic heroes will not disappoint you when you meet them. They will confirm their hero status and perhaps even strike a deeper inspiration. Tanya Turipamwe Stroh is one of my heroes, and meeting her did precisely that: she plastered the pedestal I have put her on instead of knocking it down.

She is the chief creative officer of her very own design agency dubbed Turipamwe – Tanya’s Herero middle name translating to “we are together.” Despite studying design in Cape Town and Johannesburg, living on the outskirts of London and spending a couple of months in Berlin, Tanya remains a daughter of Namibia’s soil, brought up in Windhoek. She returned to her homeland after achieving global citizen status and is changing the local design industry, one project at a time. Turipamwe’s current seven-strong team sprouted from almost a decade of solo freelancing. They are all about communication design for impact, and what an impact they are making! Turipamwe is the mastermind behind the 2022 DOEK Literary Festival visual communication and the Goethe Institut’s newest exhibit titled Sport x Culture, which visits the far corners of Namibia to document our indigenous games that have been passed down through generations.

Asking her why she chooses Namibia to be her home and creative playground, Tanya frankly responds “I am patriotic.” She is tickled by our collective potential and is forever in search of the answer to her very existential question: what does it mean to be a young Namibian post independence. While the answer is and will always be a work in progress, Tanya says, “You make it (Namibia) what you want it to be. And if the thing you are seeking does not exist it is calling you to create it.”

Her greatest source of inspiration is not some flashy coffee table book or a cultural relic like Andy Warhol. Tanya is fuelled by passionate people she meets and works with everyday. Spending time with people with different passions, says Tanya, has a way of igniting new ideas and perspectives. Life would be utterly dull and uninspired if we kept to circles and people with precisely the same interests as ours.

In an industry where deadlines and to-do lists clutter your mind from the moment you wake up, Tanya finds solitude in meditation. Other than centering herself through the art of Zen, her grounding energy is also a result of her pastimes living out her foodie dreams in the kitchen and walking her mixed special four-legged friend. Tanya admittedly struggles to balance her private life and work. Which is hardly surprising, given her entrepreneurial status and the blessed curse that is a creative career. Neither of them know 8-5 hours.

Part and parcel of why Tanya is one of my heroes is her multifaceted nature. While it is not her bread and butter, she has dabbled extensively in visual art as well as production design for theatre and cinema. Right now Tanya is working on designing the stage environment of Namibia’s very first opera, which we can look forward to come September. Her visual art, some of which was showcased at last year’s #LOVEISLOVE exhibition, makes use of design principles (a die-hard designer she is) but incorporates multimedia elements. Being a proud ally, Tanya chose to reimagine a constitution of the future for the 2021 pride month art showcase. She collaborated with her mother who is in the legal profession to write a document about sexual orientation and identity being protected under our constitution. Tanya says, “You have to claim your rights, they are not always given to you.”

This is a public service announcement to (if possible) meet your heroes. They might just ignite a spark you thought was dormant and inspire you to pursue endless possibilities.

Charene Labuschagne