Image by Eftihia Stefanidi
Nicola Brandt is a multidisciplinary artist from Namibia, known for her large-scale photographs and video works of social and psychological landscapes that reflect on themes of power, memory, desire and positionality. Brandt’s work foregrounds the idea that place and identity are mutually constituted and are impacted by environmental, social and political factors. She is interested in how these experiences and effects might be communicated through expanded documentary and performance practices.
Brandt believes that art can assist in facilitating cross-cultural dialogue and social change. She is one of the first of her generation of Namibian artists who used a cross-disciplinary approach to critique the memory culture of German colonialism and how it is situated in place. Her work featured as part of intergovernmental talks between Namibia and Germany in 2015 and was showcased at the Nama and Herero Congress in Hamburg, Germany in 2018.
Her groundbreaking exhibition The Earth Inside (2014) at the National Art Gallery of Namibia combined performance, video, photography and installation to investigate how the past continues to return into the present in various guises, and subverted traditional ideas of landscape, especially in relationship to the Namibian-German war (1904–1908) and the Namibian Genocide. Her video work Indifference was screened in a fringe exhibition at the Venice Biennale in 2015 with the Golden Lion award winner, the German artist Christoph Schlingensief.
The artist has presented her work internationally, at the MAXXI Museum in Rome, Yale University and the Würth Museum in Germany, amongst others. The artist lectures on histories of photography and contemporary art and has been an artist-in-residence at a number of institutions, including at the MARKK Museum and the University of Hamburg. In 2019 she was a visiting professor at the University of Bayreuth’s Institute of African Studies and the Iwalewahaus.
Brandt has recently published her first book Landscapes between Then and Now: Recent Histories in Southern African Photography, Video and Performance Art (2020). The project was based on her doctorate in fine art and was commissioned by the scholar in photographic culture professor Liz Wells and Bloomsbury Publishing. The artist has also contributed an essay ‘Performance, Space and Time’ to The Journey: New Positions in African Photography (2020), edited by Simon Njami and Sean O’Toole.
Education
DPhil in Fine Art (March 2015), University of Oxford, Ruskin School of Art and Christ Church
MSt in the History of Art, History of Art Department and St Catherine’s College, University of Oxford, October 2007–June 2008
AWARDS + SCHOLARSHIPS (selected)
2020–2021
Kowitz Foundation Grant to produce ‘Conversations Across Place’
2017–2018
Gerda Henkel Foundation Fellowship
2017
Leverhulme Trust (shortlisted), Oxford's Humanities Division & Ruskin School of Art, University of Oxford
Diversifying Portraiture, Vice-Chancellor's Diversity Fund, University of Oxford
2016
IFA (Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen)
Wellcome Trust: Participant in Seed Award in Humanities and Social Science
2014
Namibian Film and Theatre Awards: Indifference, Special Mention of the Jury
2010–2014
Christ Church, University of Oxford, Hugh Pilkington Scholarship
COLLECTIONS (selected)
Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners (CIP)
Iwalewahaus Collection, Bayreuth, Germany
National Art Gallery of Namibia
Embassy of Namibia, Berlin, Germany
Würth Collection, Germany
Eimuth Collection, Germany
Ministry of Lands and Resettlement, Windhoek, Namibia
↑
Nicola Brandt is a multidisciplinary artist from Namibia, known for her large-scale photographs and video works of social and psychological landscapes that reflect on themes of power, memory, desire and positionality. Brandt’s work foregrounds the idea that place and identity are mutually constituted and are impacted by environmental, social and political factors. She is interested in how these experiences and effects might be communicated through expanded documentary and performance practices.
Brandt believes that art can assist in facilitating cross-cultural dialogue and social change. She is one of the first of her generation of Namibian artists who used a cross-disciplinary approach to critique the memory culture of German colonialism and how it is situated in place. Her work featured as part of intergovernmental talks between Namibia and Germany in 2015 and was showcased at the Nama and Herero Congress in Hamburg, Germany in 2018.
Her groundbreaking exhibition The Earth Inside (2014) at the National Art Gallery of Namibia combined performance, video, photography and installation to investigate how the past continues to return into the present in various guises, and subverted traditional ideas of landscape, especially in relationship to the Namibian-German war (1904–1908) and the Namibian Genocide. Her video work Indifference was screened in a fringe exhibition at the Venice Biennale in 2015 with the Golden Lion award winner, the German artist Christoph Schlingensief.
The artist has presented her work internationally, at the MAXXI Museum in Rome, Yale University and the Würth Museum in Germany, amongst others. The artist lectures on histories of photography and contemporary art and has been an artist-in-residence at a number of institutions, including at the MARKK Museum and the University of Hamburg. In 2019 she was a visiting professor at the University of Bayreuth’s Institute of African Studies and the Iwalewahaus.
Brandt has recently published her first book Landscapes between Then and Now: Recent Histories in Southern African Photography, Video and Performance Art (2020). The project was based on her doctorate in fine art and was commissioned by the scholar in photographic culture professor Liz Wells and Bloomsbury Publishing. The artist has also contributed an essay ‘Performance, Space and Time’ to The Journey: New Positions in African Photography (2020), edited by Simon Njami and Sean O’Toole.
Education
DPhil in Fine Art (March 2015), University of Oxford, Ruskin School of Art and Christ Church
MSt in the History of Art, History of Art Department and St Catherine’s College, University of Oxford, October 2007–June 2008
AWARDS + SCHOLARSHIPS (selected)
2020–2021
Kowitz Foundation Grant to produce ‘Conversations Across Place’
2017–2018
Gerda Henkel Foundation Fellowship
2017
Leverhulme Trust (shortlisted), Oxford's Humanities Division & Ruskin School of Art, University of Oxford
Diversifying Portraiture, Vice-Chancellor's Diversity Fund, University of Oxford
2016
IFA (Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen)
Wellcome Trust: Participant in Seed Award in Humanities and Social Science
2014
Namibian Film and Theatre Awards: Indifference, Special Mention of the Jury
2010–2014
Christ Church, University of Oxford, Hugh Pilkington Scholarship
COLLECTIONS (selected)
Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners (CIP)
Iwalewahaus Collection, Bayreuth, Germany
National Art Gallery of Namibia
Embassy of Namibia, Berlin, Germany
Würth Collection, Germany
Eimuth Collection, Germany
Ministry of Lands and Resettlement, Windhoek, Namibia
Image by Eftihia Stefanidi