Artist talk – Vitjitua Ndjiharine (Windhoek) in conversation with Fiona Siegenthaler (Stuttgart – Basel)

A hybrid event. Registration for in-person attendance in Basel with Dag Henrichsen (dh@baslerafrika.ch).

For online attendace use the following link:

https://unibas.zoom.us/j/64922090450?pwd=ekF2NVFwZmNRbTNoZ25NOElxdUNGZz09

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.

Vitjitua Ndjiharine is an artist in residence with Atelier Mondial and Pro Helvetia in Basel, Switzerland.

Fiona Siegenthaler is the Africa Curator at the Linden-Museum, Stuttgart, Germany, and lectures at the University of Basel, Switzerland.

Moderation: Dag Henrichsen, Basler Afrika Bibliographien, and Maria Randy Mwatondange, Centre for African Studies, University of Basel, Switzerland.

This talk is part of the series:

Decolonising knowledge? Africa collections in focus

Three Conversations.

A series organised by the Basler Afrika Bibliographien (BAB), the Swiss Society for African Studies (SSAS) and the Centre for African Studies (CAS) of the University of Basel as part of the series “Wissensorte – Lieux de Savoir” of the Swiss Academy of Humanities and Social Sciences (SAHS)