Memory Biwa

Memory Biwa delves into the complicated legacy of colonialism in Namibia, the site of the first genocide of the twentieth century. Despite its emphasis on remembrance culture, Germany has done little to acknowledge its 1904–08 campaign against the Herero and Nama people, many of whom were interned in concentration camps or left to die in the desert. Despite its name, the “Hererostein,” a 1907 monument at Berlin’s Columbiadamm Friedhof, grieves not for Namibians, but for seven German imperial soldiers tasked with putting down their resistance.

In 2009—more than a century later—a second, smaller monument was added to recognize the tens of thousands killed during this campaign. Even in this gesture, the victims are neither named, nor numbered, and the atrocities are framed vaguely as a “colonial war,” rather than a genocide. Only in 2021 did Germany officially apologize for its actions in Namibia. The following year, a plaque from Tempelhofer Feld’s History Trail openly described the events as a genocide. Last summer, in another gesture towards reparation, a section of Petersallee in Berlin-Wedding—formerly named for colonialist Carl Peters—was renamed to honor Namibian anti-apartheid activist Anna Mungunda.

In revisiting this history and the compounded violence of suppressing its memory, Biwa recalls the figs her grandmother once grew. These trees were quiet assertions of autonomy in an era of apartheid and land dispossession, providing shelter and sustenance, while reinforcing one’s relationship to the soil. Under the framework of a traditional Nama home, Biwa will host the Yvette Abrahams Reading Cycle, a series of reading sessions that explore the activist’s legacy of cultivating indigenous plants. These gatherings build upon Peda’Gogo, an artist-led procession to the contested commemoration sites around Tempelhofer Feld.

Text: Kate Sutton