How Gertrude’s art amplifies the voices of the unheard

By Karen Chalamilla

On a Sunday afternoon at The Makumbusho Village, Gertrude Alex shares that she is only three years into her career.

She says this with both an awareness of her growth in the past three years and a humble knowledge that she’s just getting started.

The multidisciplinary visual artist got her start in 2020 when she enrolled in the Nafasi Academy at Nafasi Art Space and quickly realised that she not only had the skills to be an artist but also had a strong calling to share her art and its message with the world.

Shortly after, she would add filmmaking to her repertoire. Her transition from painting to filmmaking came as a shock, even to herself.

“I don’t think I consciously chose to focus on filmmaking,” Gertrude admits.

At the tail end of her time at the Nafasi Academy, Jesse Mpango and Darragh Amelia of the audio-visual collective Ajabu Ajabu approached her about joining the collective as the third founding member.

“They saw film potential in my art work, and I saw an opportunity to learn more about myself and my art,” Gertrude explains.

While the young artist was not quite sure what the collective would entail, she shares that joining Ajabu Ajabu exceeded her expectations.

Gertrude speaks of how the collective feels like a family: “It’s not like anyone signed an oath, but it’s amazing how committed everyone is to supporting each other’s growth.”

And on the success of her career so far, she remarks, “I have seen so many results just in the little time I have spent creating films, to the point that it’s a little scary sometimes because it feels like everything is moving faster than I thought it would.”

Since joining the collective, the filmmaker has led countless visual art workshops and programmes and released films, including the award-winning collaborative documentary Apostles of Cinema.

This documentary, made in collaboration with other members of Ajabu Ajabu: Jesse Mpango, Darragh Amelia, and Cece Mlay, spotlights three Tanzanian film workers, Maulidi Frank, Shabaan Rajab Black, and Rehema Maganga, and how they uphold the unique culture of cinema in the country.

Another one of her short films, Giza, invites us to a glimpse of her own mental health struggle.

She admits that the process of creating the film was not easy for her, “at the time of making the film, I was not doing the best mentally, so instead of making a traditional film, I chose to simply document my raw emotions for 3 minutes.”

Experimental filmmaking comes naturally to Gertrude. She explains that this is because the form lets her freely express herself without the boundaries of traditional filmmaking rules.

“As an artist, you should never limit yourself, because when you tell yourself that for something to be good, it has to follow certain rules, you will constantly be shifting to accommodate those limitations, and that can be stifling.”

But also, an artist has to stay open to new challenges, and when she was making the fictional film Nuru, Gertrude found herself having to do some adjusting.

She shares, “I actually never thought that I would end up making a fictional film. A lot of that experience felt new to me. But luckily, I had a lot of support from the script stage all the way to the editing stage.”

In Nuru, she explores how modernization has pushed us to ostracise our own customs through the lens of a traditional healer and her granddaughter.

Regardless of the kind of film she’s working on, what remains consistent is how much closer her work has brought her to people.

“I have come across so many kinds of life experiences when doing research for my films, and sometimes I hear really heavy stories,” she mentions before adding how tempting it is to constantly want to put yourself in other people’s shoes.

She laments on how emotionally taxing it can be to internalise everyone’s struggle, “but ultimately, I think it helps me learn more about different people’s experiences so that I can reflect them accurately in my work,” she says earnestly.

The experiences reflected in her work are often those of women.

“There is a lot of mention of gender equality, but there is still a lot happening in our communities that would not point towards that,” Gertrude says before adding, “with my work, I try to be one of the voices uncovering things and sparking debate on things that are still going on in our societies that are not spoken about as candidly.”

She mentions that although a lot of issues around women’s discrimination are taboo topics, one only needs to be observant enough to notice how commonplace they are.

“If you let yourself stay open to your surroundings, especially if you live in Uswahilini, where communal living is the norm, you notice a lot about your family, friends, and neighbours. These experiences are endless,” she offers.

Sometimes she doesn’t need to look outside of herself and will instead pull from her own family’s experiences.

Gertrude shares that a lot of the paintings she sold at the beginning of her career are based on the sexual harassment that women go through in family settings and how often family members turn a blind eye, which further silences the women.

Her late mother, who also went through hardship, is another repeat subject of her art.

“My mom didn’t quite have the space to speak her mind and be open about all the hardship she went through as a woman, but she secretly relied on her poetry as her voice,” she shares in what feels like a full circle moment now that her daughter is able to loudly use her art to speak of the things her mother couldn’t.

Gertrude emphasises that the stories she tells are for all women. “Although we come from different environments, I believe that all women are connected in some way. And I believe that our stories are worthy of being heard and of being turned into art.”

As the young filmmaker is trying to brace herself for all the opportunities that filmmaking has presented to her and will likely continue to, she confesses, “Sometimes it feels like the growth has come by so fast, and I don’t always feel prepared for it. I’m not sure how one prepares for this kind of takeoff.”

She laughs in disbelief at her own career trajectory before adding more confidently, “The big thing is that I’m a Christian and I have faith. So, I often return to God to say, “If you have allowed it, then I trust that I can handle it.”

When asked where she sees herself in five years, she swiftly answers, “I see myself transferring all the art and filmmaking knowledge I currently have onto younger girls.”

She pauses before thoughtfully adding, “I envision an after-school programme where kids come to Dada Gertrude to learn how to draw or hold a camera, to just play around with art. All while still making more art, of course!”