Frederick Philander
5 December 2008
Windhoek — Many visual art students annually graduate and emerge from Namibian institutions, but most of them thereafter become part of the mostly unemployed established ones in the country.
With these words, the Deputy Director of Arts in the Ministry of Youth, National Service, Sport and Culture, Ervast Mtota, hit the nail right on its head when on Monday evening he officially opened the third annual collective exhibition of the arts organisation, VA-N at Studio 77.
A number of works of members are currently on display and for sale to art lovers and the general public until December16.
"Generally, artists are perceived to be potential money makers through their creative products or they can easily become rich. However, many local artists remain poor, especially if they decide to live exclusively on their art," said Mtota, who referred to the findings of a recent study survey his department has conducted.
"It remains a mystery why the majority of Namibian artists struggle to make a living from their art works after graduation and why those who do engage in enterprises often remain in a perpetual start-up phase," the former Rector of the College of the Arts said with concern.
According to Mtota, one of the reasons for this abnormality is the fact that most young artists are unable to manage the business of arts.
"Many of them struggle in setting up a simple exhibition and everything that goes with it, such as choosing a theme, the selection of art works, securing sponsorship, selecting a venue accessible to everyone, timing of the event and properly marketing and promoting such and exhibition," he said.
He urged VA-N to take up the challenge to guide these young artists in their quest to improve the artists' plight.
"One of the aims of VA-N is to provide support and development to visual artists in Namibia with emphasis on supporting and developing emerging artists. Unfortunately, artists believe the only way to make a living is through formal employment," he said, passing the buck on to VA-N to open employment doors for such artists.
It is general knowledge among artists that the focus over the past 18 years has been on quantity and not quality education and training at government art institutions to qualify for funding.
"I would like to encourage artists to realise that art is a profession on its own. In fact, art has been since time immemorial been for gain in one way or another. Maybe we do not want to be seen commercialising Namibian arts. A paradigm shift is needed if local artists are to catch up with other arts disciplines such as music," Mtota warned.
To him, art form expressions such as architecture, illustrations, cartoon and animation, signwriting, graphic design, textile design, jewellery design and industrial design all offer creative employment opportunities to Namibian artists.
VA-N is the fastest growing art body in the country, with more than 60 paid-up members.
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One of the problematic areas is one of integrity and respect. In that regard it is necessary to draw from experiences that I have had in the Namibian art environment. With regard to 'graduates'it needs to be stated emphatically that no student studying at the University of Namibia, comes away with an art degree. Those who choose to include fine art subjects/disciplines in their degree courses merely have an ordinary B.A. degree, which is not a Fine Art degree. Unfortunately most of these graduates present themselves to prospective employers as Fine Art graduates, which they clearly are not. Any Namibian wishing to qualify themselves in Fine Art with an appropriate degree must, therefor, enrol at a university in South Africa or elsewhere. The problem is exacerbated if a graduate wishes to enter a Master's programme. There is no possibility of doing so at the University of Namibia. The questions and issues around this dilemma are well-known and the employment prospects for UNAM graduates are not made any easier as a consequence. For the auto-didacts (self-trained), the situation becomes more gloomy. There is just so far that the informal sector can go to assist individuals without formal training. There are exceptions to this, of course, but the marketplace in Namibia has already been saturated with the Mall artists selling their wares on the street, and at accommodating galleries. The tourism sector manages to inject some support, but for an ongoing reliable market to provide a decent income for 'informall-trained artists'requires a larger market, which the Namibian population of roughly 1,8 million people just cannot do. The art-buying public constitutes less than 0,1% of this small number, and the obvious outcome of these statistics is that marketing startegies which require the use of the internet and knowledge of marketing, is essential. This the young 'informally-trained artist' generally does not interact with. The marketplace is populated by very experienced artists and very young artists. The latter's works have rarely been subjected to critical scrutiny, and the result is a disasterous self-analysis about the quality of the work produced. A few fortunate sales to tourists is not an indicator about the quality of art. Most tourists tend to purchase affordable momentoes of their visits to Namibia, and rarely spend money on investment pieces. As a gallery-owner my experiences with the 'buying public' informs me about the trends, and it would be very unwise to ignore what statistics prove. The galleries in Namibia are in a very good position to provide factual information on exactly how the market functions. To ignore this is clearly unwise. One also needs to scrutinize the credentials of the individuals who claim to promote the interests of young artists and their art production. There are, of course, many more reasons why the development and progress of young Namibian artists towards a sustainable lifestyle is so slow, but this is not the forum for such a discussion. John Sampson