Vitjitua Ndjiharine and Fiona Siegenthaler: Unsettling (Y)our Gaze and Decolonizing the Archive
22.11.2021, 18:15 - 20:00
“Disrupting Unsettling Reverberations”. A performance by Vitjitua Ndjiiharine at the Solitude Sommerfest 2021 in Stuttgart, Germany. Photo credit: Frank Kleinbach/Akademie Schloss Solitude.
The archive, never neutral and the product of power relations, is an important resource for remembering the past. In more recent times colonial archives have become sites of critical reflection and vigorous artistic interventions.
In this artist talk, Namibian visual artist Vitjitua Ndjiharine provides insights into her artistic practices and experiences working with colonial photographic archives. Through her art she works to dissect the visual legacy of colonialism by physically cutting up photographic subjects and pasting them in different contexts. This process aims to question the formal and conceptual limits of colonial photography while allowing space for new narratives to emerge. With new and re-imagined contexts, the archive becomes a site of transformation, resistance, and disruption.
In conversation with the art historian, social anthropologist and curator Fiona Siegenthaler, Vitjitua Ndjiharine discusses new possibilities of knowledge creation.
Moderation: Dag Henrichsen, Basler Afrika Bibliographien, and Maria Randy Mwatondange, Centre for African Studies, University of Basel, Switzerland.
Zoom-Link:https://unibas.zoom.us/j/64922090450?pwd=ekF2NVFwZmNRbTNoZ25NOElxdUNGZz09
Registration for in-person attendance in Basel with Dag Henrichsen.