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Artwork Documentation: “Sustained”
Title: Sustained
Location: Ju/’Hoansi Living Museum, Namibia
Project: The Indigenous Project / De Oprindelige
1. Storytelling
Deep in Namibia, where the road fades into a dusty trail in the wilderness, live the Ju/’Hoansi people. Here, in the vast isolation of the Kalahari, water is not something that flows freely; it is a secret hidden beneath the sand.
The man in the image demonstrates knowledge passed down through millennia. With practiced hands, he has located a specific root below the surface and now squeezes life-giving drops directly into his mouth. The image is bathed in an intense, electric blue—the color of the water that is invisible to the naked eye, but which he knows exactly how to find.
The title Sustained refers to the respectful act that follows immediately after: he does not discard the root. He carefully places it back into the sand and covers it up, allowing it to continue growing and provide life once again. He takes only what he needs.
In Sustained, radical color filtering is used to isolate the work’s thematic core: water. The electric blue tone creates a “hyper-reality” that transforms the organic motif into something almost clinical or translucent, forcing the viewer to focus on the physical exchange of energy from plant to human.
The composition is a close study of anatomy and function; one senses the tendons in the neck and the firm grip on the root. The visual expression emphasizes that survival in this environment requires precision and strength.
Conceptually, the work revolves around interaction with the subsurface. The man does not merely stand on the ground; he stands in the sand, and his survival depends on his ability to read it. By replanting the root, he enters a cycle that sustains both himself and the ecosystem. The work stands as a monument to the technical skill and ethical environmental outlook of the Ju/’Hoansi people.