The Inner Worlds of Jakobina Gideon

Jakobina Nashikwele Gideon is quietly and powerfully working to reshape the contours of Namibia’s contemporary art landscape. Based in Windhoek, she is a multidisciplinary artist, curator, and community organiser whose work explores new ways of producing, experiencing, and sharing art in Namibia today. Whether she’s drawing meditative linework in the studio or creating space for others to explore their own creative voices,Gideon’s practice is grounded in a sense of purpose, inquiry, and care.

Originally from the desert town of Arandis, Gideon’s creative journey began with a background in architecture, a discipline that continues to shape her precise sense of balance, structure, and spatial awareness. Her visual practice—largely rooted in drawing and painting—stems from the natural world and the search for healing and identity. Often beginning with a single line, her compositions unfold as rhythmic, meditative patterns that chart the quiet repetitions of daily life and the deeper emotional and spiritual undercurrents of human experience. She often explores dualities: light and shadow, silence and voice, chaos and order. Through this visual language, she constructs what she calls “maps of becoming”—and often returns to portraiture as a way of revealing not just a face, but a feeling, a thought, a whole inner world.

In 2022, Gideon was selected to participate in the Baker’s Bay Artists’ Retreat in the Tsau //Khaeb (Sperrgebiet) National Park, a protected area rich with ecological and historical resonance. Immersed in this remote and aweinspiring landscape, she produced a work titled Wonders Around Me , a painting that channeled the solitude, silence, and ancient memory of the environment. That same residency also sparked a creative partnership with acclaimed Namibian artist Nicky Marais. Their duo exhibition Side by Side, curated by StArt Art Gallery and shown at The Sweet Side of Thingz in 2023, brought together two distinct yet dialoguing practices—Marais working with symbols and environment, Gideon turning inward toward silence and form. Together, their work opened up a space for cross-generational exchange and visual introspection.

Building on her belief in the collective as a site for nurturing creative ecosystems, Gideon founded the Creative Asylum in early 2024. Located in Windhoek’s Northern Industrial Area, the space functioned as a free art studio and residency program as a resource for emerging Namibian creatives—visual artists, musicians, writers, and more. The Asylum offered relief from structural barriers, such as lack of access to materials, mentorship, and community. The first residency cycle culminated in a group exhibition at the Franco-Namibian Cultural Centre, where participating artists tackled themes such as mental health, body image, and self-determination. The Creative Asylum stands as both a platform and a sanctuary—proof of Gideon’s belief in art as a tool for healing and connection.

Since her first solo exhibition Rainbow of Emotions in 2017 at the FNCC, Gideon has remained an active and vital contributor to Namibia’s art scene. She has participated in numerous group shows, including We Will Be Free, an international exhibition that addressed themes of freedom and postcolonial identity. Through her art and her community-focused projects, Jakobina Gideon’s work invites us to pause, to reflect, and to reconnect—with ourselves, each other, and the world around us.

Muningandu Hoveka

Jakobina Gideon’s work is currently featured in a group show at The Sweet Side of Thingz in Windhoek located in Independence Avenue.

StArt Art Gallery info@startartgallery.com