SOLD TOO! by Themba Mbuli and Trixie Munyama

Windhoek >> Johannesburg

SOLD TOO! is a collaboration between Trixie Munyama (Namibia) and Themba Mbui (South Africa), adapting Themba’s SOLD that was instigated by the genocide of the NAMA/HERERO people of Namibia that took place in 1904.

Project context: “20 human skulls of colonial victims who died after an uprising against German colonial rulers more than 100 years ago, were returned back from Germany after a decade since the first genocide of the 20th century took place in Namibia, 1904. They were amongst hundreds who starved to death after being rounded up in camps. They were murdered, beheaded, defaced and yet still exploited after death as their skulls were used by German scientists who took them to perform experiments seeking to prove the racial superiority of white Europeans over black Africans, and later they were used in Germany’s private museum. Eleven of those were people of the Nama people and nine from the Herero people.”

SOLD TOO! will be a performance art reincarnation of the 20 skulls of Herero/Nama people that were returned to Namibia. The collaborators will embark on a journey to rediscover and uncover the unnamed victims of the genocide and place them in this contemporary society; interrogating the state of Africa today i.e. migration, displaced identity, self inflicted hate, xenophobia, afrophobia etc. A conversation with the molded skulls in a form of a performance will occur through movement, sound and spoken text, also exploring metaphors and meanings that re-claims and re-face some African women and men who were defaced and buried namelessly in history.

This project will be researched and developed in March – April 2019.