NAGAA – BORANA RELOCATION (nagaa - peace, happiness, safety, health)

Throughout MARCH 2006

Office of Commonwealth Games Coordination

Venues:
National Gallery of Victoria - International
Geelong Art Gallery
Ballarat Fine Art Gallery
Bendigo Art Gallery

Producer: Global Art Projects

Curator: Stuart Koop

The Borana people of Northern Kenya are pastoralists moving from one location to another with their cattle depending onwater and season. Borana women weave the portable grass huts, which are transported between locations.

Due to increasing urbanisation and agriculture the traditional homelands are dwindling and the Borana suffer increasing homelessness, like many other traditional cultures and lifestyles. Soon there will be no land on which to place their huts, no land to tend their cattle, no place for their culture.

Nagaa relocated some of the Borana’s temporary huts to prominent and significant sites, such as public gardens, public art and craft galleries, in the key satellite cities of the Commonwealth Games – Geelong, Bendigo, Ballarat – as well as Melbourne.

The relocation is profoundly symbolic, using a craft and cultural tradition to draw attention to the plight of the Borana, and similar communities around the world, where local ways are changing under global duress.