Solo Exhibition — Os Sonhos do Embondeiro
May 17 — June 7, 2013
MNHN Siexpo, Luanda, Angola

Installation, mixed media, light object, ca 11 m. Lisbon, Portugal; Luanda, Angola

Common names fort this desert plant:
tumboa, n’tumbo (Angola), !kharos (Nama/Damara), nyanka (Damara), khurub (Nama), onyanga (Herero), welwitschia (botanical name)

The Welwitschia, like the Thinker or the
sable antelope (Palanca Negra), is a national symbol. In this installation, Iris Chocolate takes us back to our memory of it through the plant’s imaginary, its antiquity and stillness. This styl-
ized representation seems to portray in its long leaves, the long roots of the plant in its natural state. Memory is here represented as sustaining the identity of a people. (Suzana Sousa, curator)

Welwitschia mirabilis grows in isolated communities in the Namib Desert, in a narrow strip, about 1,000 km along up the coast from the Kuiseb River in central Namibia to Mossam-
edes in southern Angola. The plants are seldom found more than 100 to 150 km from the coast, and their distribution coincides with the
fog belt.

Welwitschia is named after the Austrian botanist and doctor Friedrich Welwitsch who "discovered" the plant in 1859 in present-day Angola.

Yet another example how a name of a European botanist replaced in science one of the original names given by the people living in this region long before. Eg. the plant was named Onyanga by the Ovaherero people from Angola and Namibia. It means “onion of the desert” in Otjiherero.

An adult welwitschia consists of two leaves,
a stem base and its roots. Its two permanent leaves are unique in the plant kingdom. They are the original leaves from the time when the plant was a seedling, and they just continue
to grow and are never shed. They are leathery, broad, strap-shaped and they lie on the ground becoming torn to ribbons and tattered with age. The stem is low, woody, hollowed-out, obconical in shape and sturdy. The largest recorded speci-
men is in the Messum Mountains and is 1.8 m tall, and another on the Welwitschia Flats near the Swakop River is 1.2 m tall and 8.7 m wide. Carbon dating tells us that on average, welwit-
schias are 500–600 years old, although some
of the larger specimens are thought to be 2,000 years old. Their estimated lifespan is 400 to 1,500 years. Growth occurs annually during
the summer months.