The Art Exhibition "Kalahari Highway"

PARTY hosted Kalahari Highway- exhibition in Gallery Valo, Arktikum, Rovaniemi, Finland from 16th of August until 16th of September 2018.

The project has executed workshops based on art-based methods in Namibia and South Africa with the San youth, developing different methods for empowerment. The exhibition presents works made by the youth in these workshops and works by the projects researchers.

San societies are indigenous people living on the edge of the Kalahari Desert. Since the hunter-gatherer culture has yielded, they have suffered from unemployment, like many other Southern African youth. Unemployment has stroke the most to the youth, because the opportunity to education is faint. In the project, we have tried to strengthen the youth’s cultural identity, encourage them to appreciate their own background and  be empowered by art to strengthen their self-confidence. During the project, also methods to improve local communication between the youth and the society there has been developed through art.

The exhibition works have been produced by using different techniques. The exhibition showcases among other things photographs, videos, beadworks, felt works, and installations. The works are from South Africa’s side of Grabouw, !Khwa Ttu and Platfontein as well as Namibia’s Windhoek.


The exhibition offers an unique way to get acquainted with the results of the research project.

Organisers Heidi Pietarinen & Eija Timonen

For years, Eija Timonen has explored cracks, figures and colours of frozen water and the rhythm of these elements from on different layers of ice. Heidi Pietarinen was impressed by tactile and colourfull qualities of Timonen´s photographs so she started to interpret and weave these images into jacquard woven fabrics.

After seeing Ju/‘hoansi San beaders´ embroidery art works, Pietarinen and Timonen started to study the complexity that happens in collaboration where stakeholders from different cultural and educational backgrounds, from Finland and Namibia, come together to work around a mutual topic. The essential results of the project were interpreted embroidered art works and woven textiles, which were based on Timonen’s ice photographs.

The Flying Ants and Northern Beauty is a crossing borders project, which open possibilities to learn about textiles so that the designs would invite their viewers to look at different textile cultures: textiles, narratives and identities.

Organisers Anu Kylmänen, Virpi Nurmela & Marja Ylioinas

The workshop aimed to strengthen the self-esteem and artistic identity of the young artists, thus enhancing their emotional and social well-being. Wool was presented as a new material and felting as a new technique using and combining Finnish and Namibian materials.

The workshop was carried out by service design methods. The workshop consisted of mindfulness exercises on which the inspiration for the art work was based. The preparation of the art work was carried out with instructions to avoid the interference of critical mind or restrictions of learned methods. Thus, the art work depicts an expression of participants’ current feeling – me, here, now.

Organisers Anu Kylmänen & Susanna Vuorjoki

Aim of the workshop was strengthening artistic identity of the participants by working with hands and with service design methods. Participants were a group of sewing ladies in Platfontain village. Wool as a material was new to all the participants as well as felting was a new technique. The ladies were very talented and they get familiar with wool very soon. In their works you can see images of their cultural themes. Workshop took three hours in three days.

Organisers Esa Meltaus, Satu Peteri, Anneli Pohjola & Maria Keskipoikela

At first we walked outside of The College of the Arts (Cota) to a little square. The course was started by telling what do we think, feel, understand about enviromental art. Next there were spread the materials to the ground and told the students to go around, find ideas and to use materials. And they really did, just some questions and go!

This was amazing as the materials weren’t the “normal” type of materials that are used. There were for example rubber bands, shoe polish, cotton cord, kitchen foil, balloons, sugar and tomatoes.

In Lapland course students spent some hours to think, but not in Namibia. They became inspired immediately, they had fun and they worked also in teams. Lots of laughing and talking. They were quick. In lapland it took at least one day to finish the works and only 1/3 of the materials were used. These guys spent everything in 3 hours. Only the empty bag was left.

Organiser Tarja Wallius

I was working with san-youth in South Africa in Platfontein, Kimberley and Rosedale, Upington in summer 2017. In the Trash Art Project Workshops we made san-symbols of the trash around. Those symbols were often related to home and household equipments. The final form of the installation was created in Finland. The shape of the installation is a typical local house ”home”. The bricks are made of small plastic snack wrappings. The environment is full of this kind of trash which is a real environmental problem there. The name of the installation came from the Pink Floyd’s song Another brick in the wall which means an event that has caused you to become more alienated and distant with something i.e. society. That has happened to san-youth in South Africa. The sound of the installation is made of the rare san-languages which were used during the workshops.

Working periods of Satu Miettinen and Tarja Wallius at summer 2017 in South Africa were built on art framed encounters. All the way to the Arctic area, thousands of kilometers away, records of spontaneous joy and excitement catched the materials while getting to know each other. It originated an experience of participation in encounters where you were not present.

Scarp Steps -sound compilation builds on transmitted encounters bringing past and future space between Tarja’s and Satu’s art works. Fragments of sound reflects the participants feelings bringing a dialog as a part of the two communality speech that have very different physical shape. The sound compilation builds on the momentary sounds of workshops audiovisual materials, that bring together the environment, the making and the voices of the materials.

Organiser Satu Miettinen

This artwork is related to community mapping workshop carried out in Upington, South Africa. We were working together on satellite image of Rosedale community downloaded and printed out from Google Maps. The youth were telling about and identifying places important to them. Walking the streets of Rosedale community with youth and talking with the elders who were mastering Nluu language was about learning about the community and each others. The communities are following the green rivers in the red sand of Kalahari.

During the journey, the history and complex present of the San People were raised: Their lives are still influenced by the choices made by the previous generations. Neither can they escape the social reality of today. The things I heard made me think about the identity of both the community and the individuals.

In Platfontein most of the houses were built according to the same mold. However, the similarity was far from the individual choices of residents: They painted their doors and built their fences according to their own preferences. The same was reflected in other details.

Nature was strongly present in the everyday life of the villagers. Orange sand, stunted green plants and acacia trees surrounded the houses. The wind was able to blow unhindered overt the sand fields and raise dust clouds.
Nature also impacted my photography: The translucency of light and the glow of colors could not be missed. The awareness of local poisonous snakes and scorpions increased my cautiousness - I would think twice before I would leave the paths and roads.

Organizer Dan Brackenbury

Pitching the Future – is an overview of a PARTY project workshop in Windhoek, Namibia, in 2017. During this workshop, San students were divided into groups and invited to design a range of service design concepts that would help young men and women living in deprived locations in the north of the country. Three services were pitched covered the areas of knowledge sharing, water transportation and education. This video was shown to a group of stakeholders in Windhoek, in order to explain the PARTY project mission and to start a conversation about potentially implementing these design ideas.

Organiser Dan Brackenbury

Time to give back – is a final pitch that was created during the workshop. The pitch is broken down into three distinct narratives – context, obstacles and a possible solution. The notes and drawings created during the workshops accompany the speeches made by the students. The purpose of the video is to communicate the power of the speeches in a graphic manner and has been designed to explain how these workshops can produce actionable outcomes.

Organisers Vikki Eriksson, Veronica Barnes, Michelle van Wyk, Penny George

Voices from !Khwa ttu’s San Youth: Visualising through Making - documents the process and final prints of a group of San youth, who participated in an explorative printing workshop. During the facilitated session youth participants learned the basics of collagraph printing and block printing. The video and physical prints produced were displayed as part of the PARTY ‘Recollection’ exhibition held in Cape Town, 2018. The theme speaks to one’s ability to remember an experience, story, thought and feeling. Storytelling is an important part of many indigenous cultures, and this is true of the San as well. The participatory workshop was underpinned by the process and visualization of storytelling and printing as a medium to capture recollection and present to an audience. The video explored the participants’ process of producing intimate items of personal storytelling. Their voices, their stories.

Organiser Taina Kontio

SAN youth in Upington Party project were asked to leave a message to the Future. In their messages they highlight the problems that they feel the most urgent today, loosing their SAN language, or cultures, and alcohol or drug abuse.

Organisers Esa Meltaus & Maija Rautiainen

The drive to organize the workshop with Katutura Art Center and art students came from art-based methods that are used in the project for empowerment and creating local dialogue. This 1,5 weeks workshop gave these students the possibility to consider how do they see their country and culture and furthermore, what do they want to show about it in Finland. They learned to collaborate in international project and with each others as a group of artists. They gained the understanding on concept art and how to process their emotions and thoughts about their country and culture.

In the preplanning was agreed that we had the idea of buying 3 suitcases where the students could create something that they would like to show from Namibia to people in Finland. The idea was how they want to be seen and what they think is important in their country. They created some bigger art pieces, which would fit into the luggage for the traveling. In the exhibition in Finland they would be taken out so that the luggage would be in the floor and the art inside would be hanged from the roof.

The plan changed a lot with the creative minds and the outcome was more than was expected.

Organiser Pirjo Puurunen

The theme of my photography workshop was portraiture, because I thought that topic might be interesting and useful for the San youth.

At first I had a short introductory lecture. I used as a background material the photographs from the book of a South African photographer Robin Fryer “I’m Famous in South-Africa”. By analyzing those shots I explained how to take good photos. Afterwards we walked together around the village to the spots which they had chosen. There they photographed each other and applied the information they have learnt in the lecture.

Later we looked at the photos taken by them and I gave my feedback – many pictures were good. This success helped the young people to see that you can get of them, the poor, living in the margins of society, similar photographs as of the television and Internet celebrities.