Memory Biwa is a historian, and artist. Her work addresses memorial and reparative processes in postcolonial Namibia. Biwa’s focus on oral narratives, sartorial performances and re-enactments informs notions of subjectivity and the re-centering of alternative epistemologies and imaginaries. As part of the artistic duo, ‘Listening at Pungwe’, Biwa has presented performances and installations in South Africa, Ghana, Senegal, Switzerland and Germany. Biwa previously lectured at the University of Namibia in the Department of Education, Languages, Humanities and Commerce from 2016 – 2020. Biwa is currently a DAAD Artist in residence in Berlin, and is co-curator for the Triennial of Small Sculptures, Fellbach, “Vibration of Things”, 4 June to 3 September 2022.
Publications:
Leonhard Emmerling, Latika Gupta, Luiz Proença, and Memory Biwa (eds.), ‘Museum Futures’, Turia and Kant, Wien-Berlin, 2021.
‘Regginigger – A Play on Eastman’s Wor(l)ds of Divinity’, “We Have Delivered Ourselves from the Tonal. Of, Towards, On, For Julius Eastman”, Archive Books and Savvy Books, 2020.
‘Afterlives of genocide: return of human bodies from Berlin to Windhoek, 2011’, in Fazil Moradi, Ralph Buchenhorst, and Maria Six-Hohenbalken, Memory and Genocide: On what remains and the possibility of representation, Routledge, 2017.
‘Weaving the Past with Threads of Memory: Narratives and Commemorations of the Colonial War in Southern Namibia’. Unpublished PhD thesis. Department of History, University of the Western Cape, 2012.
‘Stories of the Patchwork Quilt: An oral history project of the Nama-German War in southern Namibia’, in Andre du Pisani, Reinhart Koessler, and William Lindeke, The Long Aftermath of War: Reconciliation and Transition in Namibia, Arnold Bergstraesser Institute, Freiburg, Germany, 2010
‘Enchanting Paths of Healing: The !Aman Commemoration of the Shark Island Concentration Camp – Dis(re)membering Bodies of War’. Paper presentation at Status Conference. Volkswagen Foundation Programme, ‘Knowledge for Tomorrow’, Bamako, November 2007.
Exhibitions:
‘/Khoo-xun’, Site specific sound installation, Alte Molkerei, 100 Jahre Donaueschingen Musiktage, Donaueschingen, October 2021
‘SunBorn Lullabies and Battle Cries’, Audiowork, “For the Phoenix To Find its Form in Us”, Savvy Contemporary, Berlin, June, 2021
Sound installation, Old Customs House, Audible Edge Festival, Perth, April 2021.
‘SunBorn Lullabies and Battle Cries’, Audiowork, Recontres: Tracing Fractures: Across Listening, Movement, Restitution and Repair, Manifesta 13, Marseilles, 12 September 2020.
‘Another Spectral Figuration of an Archive’, Sound installation, Circuit, Lausanne, July 2020
‘Tsi I Ge Ge Ha He (Tree Shrine)’, Sound Sculpture, “Canine Wisdom for the Barking Dog – The Dog Done Gone Deaf”, IFAN, Dak’Art Biennale, Dakar, May 2018.
‘Regginigger – A Play on Eastman’s Wor(l)ds of Divinity’, Sound installation, “We have delivered Ourselves from the Tonal – Of, with, towards, on Julius Eastman, Savvy Contemporary, March 2018.
