ART AL FRESCO

There’s something spectacular about random run-ins with art.

Like most people going about the business of existing, you may be walking down the street somewhere, the incessant mental loop muttering something akin to “need bread, pay bills, send email, do laundry” and suddenly you’ll be thrust into another dimension.

At the Wernhil taxi rank, the push is into the past.

As taxis whizz by, spiriting industrious Windhoekers from pillar to post, a mural by Taanyanda Matheus conjures something slower. ‘The Evolution of Transport’, the artist’s painting of a donkey-drawn cart which looms large in the dim urban underpass, offers a quaint reminder of the honking taxis’ humble beginnings as it quietly catches the passing eye with an anachronistic flash of colour.

Nambowa Malua

One of six murals created for the ENK Institute for Public Art’s ‘Windhoek Mural Project’, ‘The Evolution of Transport’ is part of a larger local trend to enjoy art al fresco.

While the move outdoors has, in part, been necessitated by the ongoing pandemic, Namibia with its 300+ days of sunshine is the perfect place for art to thrive under the country’s beautiful blue skies.

On a late November afternoon, public art is at its most marvellous.

The inaugural Otjomuise Live Arts Festival (OLAF) has sprung up seemingly overnight and set up at a playground in Khomasdal. The children who frequent the park can’t believe their eyes as – Lize Ehlers and Adriano Visagie – people they know from the media begin to perform ‘Wie?’ with all the slang, banter and spirit of Namibia’s coloured community.

Public art is a portable feast and OLAF carries it all across the city.

Xallamo peforms Pantsula at the Otjomuise Live Arts Festival

There are Pantsula performances in Post Street Mall. There is Spoken Word at Unam Plaza. Dama Fusion entertains at Otjomuise Shopping Center. Whilzahn Gelderbloem considers the plight of the struggling artist on the steps of the municipality building. Angelina Akawa (Streetlight) and Miss Mavis/Rodelio Lewis (Hidden Bi Gender) both perform on Independence Avenue and, for eight days, the Goethe- Institut and the National Theatre of Namibia manifest their mandate of “bridging life and arts in the city”.

Give or take 800 km due south, Oranjemund embraces public art with similar creative energy.

A selection of artists arrive from the city and begin to reimagine walls and spaces in the small mining town. The effort of fashioning sculptures and painting murals celebrating the town’s diamond industry and local wildlife is toattract tourists to a place that has been closed to all but authorised visitors for decades.

OMDIS - Nicky Marais painting opening house

The name of OMDis Town Transform Agency’s public art project is what anyone with a true appreciation of the arts knows down to their bones: “Art Can Transform”.

The idea is worth plastering on a T-shirt but is more valuable as a line to live by.

Art has the ability to foster change and when it’s as accessible as walking past a neighbourhood playground or pausing below a painted wall, it can stop you in your tracks, shut down the routine mental loop and shake loose the profound.

Art has the ability to foster change and when it’s as accessible as walking past a neighbourhood playground or pausing below a painted wall, it can stop you in your tracks, shut down the routine mental loop and shake loose the profound.

In 2021, local artists brought their creativity out into the sun.

And as 2022 hits its stride, I hope to see you outside.

Martha Mukaiwa is a columnist and writer based in Windhoek, Namibia in-between spirited sojourns around the world. Her narrative nonfiction, personal essays, travel writing and short stories have appeared in Travel Africa, Quartz, Fields & Stations, Holiday, The Africa Report, Truthdig, Matador Network, Africa is a Country, The Namibian & The Kalahari Review. Martha is an honorary writing fellow at the University of Iowa. Read more at marthamukaiwa.com .