Africa-Press – Namibia. IN a once derelict hut in Sweden, award-winning multidisciplinary artist Imke Rust draws the spirit of Twyfelfontein across space and time.
Her installation which connects the decorated farmhouses of Hälsingland and the famed site of ancient rock engravings in northern Namibia was created for this year’s World Heritage Scholarship.
Rust was awarded the residency from a crop of 101 applicants from 34 countries and spent four weeks living and working at Sweden’s Hälsingegården Erik-Anders and Kristofers Farm.
The scholarship invited artists to connect the aspirational and elaborately hand-painted farmhouses of Hälsingland with another Unesco World Heritage site and Rust quickly saw a link with the rock engravings of Twyfelfontein, some of which, like ‘Lion Man’ and ‘Dancing Kudu’, are said to depict shamanic rituals and trances.
“Both sites are not ‘mere decorations’ but are intentional creative interventions, which allow us to transcend into an alternative reality,” she says.
Transforming the hut into a fairy tale-like space by painting wallpaper in the style of the decorated Hälsingland farms while referencing Twyfelfontein in images rendered akin to the famed rock engravings, Rust engaged in a highly intuitive process that combined found natural and man-made objects with retro telephone book pages which culminate in an installation she titled ‘Drawing Certainty from the Spring of Doubt’.
Though the installation is in Sweden and draws on Twyfelfontein, Rust maintains that neither becomes the other.
“The installation creates a room where both sites are in correspondence with each other, without imposing one on the other. Correspondence is an open-ended, dialogical process of unfolding and becoming,” she says.
To Rust, this straddling and correspondence between realities, cultures, time and space, provides a unique opportunity for learning and connection.
“Maybe a bit like eavesdropping on a conversation between the two sites and making up your own story from the elements you recognise and the ones which seem strange and unfamiliar. Or like stumbling into an unknown cave and finding more and more treasures as you look, but not fully understanding them.”
Honoured to have her installation supported and on show at the Erik-Anders World Heritage site which receives around 30 000 visitors per year, Rust left Sweden with the feeling of having highlighted our shared humanness.
“One of the central ideas of my art and installation is to show how humans are much more alike than different,” Rust says.
“We marvel at the ‘other’ and how exotic they are, but once we look a bit closer, we can realise that we all have the same needs, hopes and fears.”
Visit imkerust.com to explore the installation online.
