Guns and Rain Gallery is delighted to announce the online opening of their new exhibition The Borders of Memory”, by Tuli Mekondjo (Namibia) and Helena Uambembe (South Africa/Angola), whose work explores the tangled histories and legacies of Namibia’s war of Independence, also known as the “Border War”.
Juli Mekondjo recounts that meeting Helena Uambembe was “like meeting myself”. The two artists’ life biographies are, to a degree, inversely mirrored, and have been fundamentally shaped by Namibia’s war of Independence, also known in South Africa as “the Border War” (1966-1990). Information around the war was highly censored during apartheid and, even today, there is a disconcerting historiographical gap in how the war of its “fifth province” is (not) remembered in South Africa.
Dissatisfied with both dominant narratives about the past and a host of ‘absences’ at the communal and personal level, both artists in different ways have pursued archival and oral history research in a quest for understanding, healing and belonging. They offer new postcolonial, postfeminist vantage points from which to engage with a history which has mostly been told by men, variously as one of patriotism, heroism, betrayal or PTSD.
The exhibition can be viewed both in a short video and explored on Arsty. There is also a catalogue PDF can be found here.
For more information on the gallery and special programs visit https://gunsandrain.com/
