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With Her Art Shira Wachsmann Addresses the Nearly Forgotten Genocide of the Herero and Nama Peoples in Present-Day Namibia

The artist Shira Wachsmann in her workshop
CC-BY Saro Gorgis

The streets of Kreuzberg are soaked through with rain on this grey February day. Shira Wachsmann, a graceful young woman with short black hair, leads me into her atelier in a pre-war apartment. She doesn’t have much time. Her solo exhibition “Tribe Fire” is scheduled to open on 13 March 2016 in the gallery cubus-m in Berlin’s Schöneberg neighborhood (further information on the gallery’s website). It will remain there until 23 April. Large drawings, soon to become part of the Tribe Fire installation, hang in the atelier. “There’s still a lot to do,” the Israeli native explains.

Her most recent art project is spread across her desk: two postcards that Wachsmann designed for the Jewish Museum Berlin. She produced editions of 400 of each piece, which have been available for individual purchase since 1 April 2016 in the art vending machine of the museum’s permanent exhibition (more information on the art vending machine on our website). Wachsmann takes a seat in a green armchair and ponders the cards. They show two circular motifs, a form that appears throughout the artist’s work like a guiding principle. Here they depict an abstract diamond and a black sun. → continue reading