“Verbally I am sometimes unable to explain, but I think my body remembers. It is there within my system. I can sometimes just sob. Then I go out, and hug myself. And I say to my ancestors: For the first time I start to understand what this pain is about, and why things are as they are today. We haven’t processed these traumas. Until now. We just have been piling them up in our systems. For centuries we haven’t been in dialogue about this. Despite putting a distance, it will always come back. Even if you are trying to avoid it, it will come back to haunt us.”
Tuli Mekondjo

Reinterpret. Edit. Appropriate. In this work, Tuli Mekondjo activates a graphic archive. The archive piece she uses in this work is a map depicting the 1904 military communication network around the Waterberg. It originates from a collection of maps that was gathered throughout research into telecommunications connections in the German South West Africa colony, now Namibia.

The war map in Mekondjo’s work shows black lines, counteracted by weaving red threads through it. It shows the telegraphy connections of the Schutztruppen during the war against and genocide of the Herero and Nama people.