Tuli Mekondjo

Tuli Mekondjo (b. 1982 in Angola) is an interdisciplinary artist based in Namibia whose work seeks to honour her Namibian heritage and connect with collective and ancestral knowledge and memory. Her practice engages heavily with archival materials as a way of mining and reappropriating colonial imagery as a liberatory and connecting practice. Concerned with the preservation and restoration of indigenous practices and knowledge, Mekondjo’s work is trans-generational and connected to the land, healing and collectivity.

Erasures and silence are productive ideas in Mekondjo’s practice. Her work considers processes of historical erasure and ways of reconnecting to ancestral knowledge and memory. As she explains, ‘I feel there's hope, and with the work that I'm doing, I feel like all is not lost. It's really a matter of connecting to the realms, to the ancestral realms and to keep seeking, to keep asking the questions and to find those connections.’ Through this process of reconnection, Mekondjo explores the knowledge that has survived despite colonial disruption, including indigenous practices and material knowledge. Her work asks how forgotten or suppressed histories might be recovered through connection to ancestors, land and inherited knowledge.

Mekondjo’s solo and group exhibitions include Sida | ôana mâpa hâ? Where are our children? An ode to the spirits of the south, Hales Gallery, New York (2024); Ousie Martha, Guns & Rain, Johannesburg (2023); Unmourned Bodies, AVA Gallery, Cape Town (2023); Unsettled, Zwartzusters Monastery, Antwerp (2022); Limbadungila, The Project Room, Windhoek (2019); and Future Africa Visions in Time, Bayreuth Academy of Advanced African Studies, Iwalewahaus Bayreuth and the Goethe-Institut, Namibia (2018), among many others.

Contributor: Bulelwa Kunene (A Gathering)

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