Created and performed by white South African artists Coila-Leah Enderstein and Nicola van Straaten, the site-specific work engages with a street in Berlin named after a province in South Africa that no longer exists. Transvaalstraße cuts through the so-called “African Quarter" of Wedding. When the British took control of the Cape in the early 19th century, descendants of Dutch settlers traveled north-eastwards with the hopes of establishing a homeland. In 1852, the territory north of the Vaal River was demarcated as the Afrikaner nation, “Transvaal.” Starting from their perspectives as descendants of European settlers, the two artists interweave lesser-known histories and their personal narratives to critically reflect on coloniality through the frame of Transvaalstraße.
Coila-Leah Enderstein and Nicola van Straaten have been collaborating closely for over eight years and through their (k)intimacy, they nourish their shared creative praxis with conflict and conversation, research and reading, play and improvisation, story-telling and performance-making.