Etaneno is a cattle farm situated in the heart of Namibia’s bushland run by Erwin Gebert, an architect originally from Freiburg. In 1989, Gebert and his friend Alfonso Hüppi, a Freiburg-born artist and longstanding professor at the Düsseldorf Academy of Art, decided that Etaneno should also become a centre for art. One year later, the exhibition hall was constructed. Since then, each year one or two groups of artists, chiefly from Germany and Switzerland, have travelled to the centre to spend four weeks in the bush. Here they are able to work far away from the art establishment and to reflect on the meaning of their work in this inhospitable, yet breathtaking, landscape.

Over the past few years, in parallel to these artistic activities, a joint project has evolved with the school in neighbouring Kalkfeld, a village of corrugated iron huts. Here the children receive various artistic and practical stimuli in their everyday lives, both at school and in the community.

From the very beginning, the Museum of Modern Art has sponsored Etaneno and in return is able to draw on the works created and stored there for its own collections. These works are now to be displayed in Freiburg for the first time, accompanied by a documentary on the unusual project.