Public Events

Keynote in the framework of the international conference “Interwoven Dependencies. Fashion and the Heritage of Mission”:

Friday, 4 April 2025, 4.30pm
Keynote Performance
Tuli Mekondjo
Saara Omulaule: Black Saara
Followed by a discussion with Maria Caley, Loini Iizyenda, University of Namibia, and Tuauoovisiua Katuoo, artist, Namibia
Venue: Global Heritage Lab at P26, Poststraße 26, 53111 Bonn and online

Please register for onsite attendance: https://lmy.de/gVDpi
Please register for online attendance: https://lmy.de/uaMlK

Tuli Mekondjo’s performance Saara Omulaule/Black Saara (2023) was improvised immediately after reading Kari Miettinen’s book On the Way to Whiteness – Christianization, Conflict, and Change in Colonial Owamboland, 1910-1965. The Finnish Sunday school song about “Black Saara – the little Negro girl” prompted a visceral response and an avenue of questioning for Mekondjo. She asks: “What made my ancestors (Aawambo people) convert to Christianity during the period 1910-1965?” The artwork evokes the need for ritual practices on living bodies as an attempt to awaken their souls from spiritual death in order to connect to our ancestors. This practice insists on the imperative performative action carried forward by ancestors, whose remains are still kept in the bondage of colonially created museums and missionary-made cemeteries. Mekondjo’s use of food, ritual and medicinal items to install the performance video are a way to connect ancestral spirits with the digital manifestation. So too does the use of organic materials signify a new growth with organic synthesis. PW: olukonda

Tuli Mekondjo (b. 1982, Kwanza-Sul, Angola) is a mixed-media artist, exploring the construction of identity politics in the shadow of Namibia’s violent past as both a German and later South African colony. She is recipient of the Villa Romana Prize 2024

Photo: Tuli Mekondjo, Saara Omulaule/Black Saara, 2023, Courtesy by the artist.