Exploring history and identity politics through the lens of those who lived in exile during Namibia’s independence war, Tuli Mekondjo (b. 1982) works with layered, textured mixed media (embroidery, collage, paint, resin andmahangu millet grain - a Namibian food staple). She extends this into performance, and vice versa.
Drawing on photographic archives and histories of change,loss and submission - particularly when it comes to women- she stitches between past and present. Sensitive botanical vines pay homage to her forebears, fertility and continuity, whilst veiled figures comment on gendered struggle, intergenerational trauma, and displacement, bearing a quiet grief and a quest for truth.
In 2018 Mekondjo was a participant in the Future Africa Visions in Time exhibition, a collaboration between the Bayreuth Academy of Advanced African Studies,Iwalewahaus Bayreuth and the Goethe-Institut Namibia. She has been mentored by, and has exhibited with, the NJE Collective at the FNB Joburg Art Fair (2018) and Investec Cape Town Art Fair (2019), as well as in group exhibitions at Guns & Rain in Johannesburg
Click the link to learn more about Mekondjo's studio work:
Artist spotlight: Tuli Mekondjo 
