Sometimes an artist will open for you the doors leading to another one. The Borders of Memory curated by Julie Taylor created a poignant dialogue between Helena Uambembe and Tuli Mekondjo who share traumatic family and personal histories linked with the Namibia war of independence. The commonalities go beyond the personal as the two artists also respective practices that are closely related in their effort to reclaim the narrative: performance, the use of archival image material, textile work and stitching.
A focus of the collection is keeping connections with places we have known in Africa. Namibia is not one of them and therefore we did not have much knowledge about artists from the country. But rules are made to be broken, aren’t they? Tuli Mekondjo’s works many layers, the uncommon materials and technique she uses, the strength of her story were among the propositions that convinced us.
