Toolbox Series: Online resources for African Studies

This week we recommend the online exhibtion “Ovizire. Somgu: From Where Do We Speak?”, a German-Namibian art and history exhibition project that “interrogates colonial representations, the colonial gaze and legacies of power embedded in the landscape that continues to dominate or silence counter-histories and diverse voices”. The project was centered on a colonial photographic archive housed at the Museum am Rothenbaum (MARKK) in Hamburg.

“Drawing from its title ‘Ovizire’, a word from the Otjiherero language, and ‘Somgu’ in Khoekhoegowab, which in everyday use can be translated to mean ‘shadow’ or ‘aura’, this cross-disciplinary project proposes a critical reading of the colonial photographic archive through its gaps and shadows.” The physical iteration of this exhibtion was held at the Frans Nambinga Arts Training Center in Havana, Windhoek from 6-25 November 2020.