Remembering the Herero-Nama Genocide in Namibia

The mass killing of Herero/Ovaherero and Nama/Namaqua peoples carried out by German colonial forces between 1904 and 1908 in Namibia (then German South West Africa) is often described as a “forgotten genocide” (e.g., Erichsen and Olusoga 2011).¹ When this kind of rhetorical trope gets employed in the art world, it often casts the artist as what Okwui Enwezor calls an “agent of memory,” a figure who rescues forgotten historical traces from a mausoleum-like archive and then presents them to a hitherto ignorant public (2008: 46). Black Box/Chambre Noire (2005) by the South African artist William Kentridge is perhaps the most well-known artwork to address the genocide. It operates within the understanding of the relationships among artist, archive, and audience outlined by Enwezor (Dubin 2007: 130). Commissioned by the Deutsche Guggenheim in Berlin, the installation takes the form of a miniature proscenium with mechanized figures and an animated film. Visual...