The first Triennial of Namibia to engage in a virtual global discourse.
Curatorial Role: Acting Chief Curator & Collections Curator, NAGN
Status: First Online Triennial since 2107 inception
The Bank Windhoek Triennial 2020 is the first Triennial of Namibia that can be accessed online since 2007 which was the inception of the first ever Triennial in Namibia. This is the first Triennial of Namibia that will be engaging in a virtual global discourse and it is also the first ever Triennial that had a Namibian only panel of judges to present to award authentically Namibian artist and their creative products. It is a celebration of visual art in Namibia that provides a platform for the developing and promoting the Namibian visual art industry. Staged every three years, this highly competitive art exhibition is open to all artists with Namibian citizenship, domicile or permanent residence.
The Bank Windhoek Triennial 2020 has evoked a re-considering for human life and presence through the voices, gestures, and rhythms that challenge dominant assumptions and open up perspectives. Engaging with our present at the threshold of past and nascent worlds, the Bank Windhoek Triennial 2020 encourages multiple ways of imagining, knowing, and expressing as it is for the first time in Namibian history is engaging in a global discourse with the rest of the worlds Triennials.
The submissions met us with overwhelming interest of 491, which have prompted the urgency to continue collective thinking through, learning and imagining critical, politically-informed artistic practices that grasp and intervene into the present. It proffers a space bringing those involved and/or interested in art, theory, and social action into a collective conversation with a focus on the changing nature of artistic practices and representation in the face of multiple and entwined crises, virtual migration and critical redefinitions.
We experienced the uprisings of minority communities and the police brutality experienced in Namibia when the youth marched against gender based violence with the death of Shannon Wasserfal with #shutitdown, #shutitalldown and #OnsIsMoeg, alongside the global parallels of the recent deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor.
The Bank Windhoek Triennial 2020 artworks states unequivocally that we need to break free, and that views need to be heard. This representation reflects the diversity of our country and the responsibility of us as citizens to listen, learn, and reflect on how we can further have an inclusive culture.
The artists voices in contributing to socio-cultural and economic dialogues within the artistic discipline have found their footing and valid standing front and center with the addition of the categories Textile Art and the renaming of the Craft category to Contemporary Customary Art. These are both Namibian creative processes and techniques, generationally passed down indigenous knowledge depositories which were waning in the background but that carry such profound heritage and knowledge about Namibia.
The use of locally found materials and the migration from the Eurocentric creative processes authenticates through medium employed, the concepts the powerful role in fostering empathy and connection, addressing the environmental impacts, speaking to our times, helping us to understand our past, and offering possible paths forward toward a more just and equitable future.
Desiree D. !Nanuses
NAGN Acting Chief Curator