Untitled by Nukwase Tembo

“Untitled”, 2020, Oil paint and gold leaf on canvas, 65cm x 90cm

Nukwase Tembo is a Zambian artist who started drawing at the age of two. After graduating from high school at the Metropolitan School, she studied social work at Ridgeway Campus in Lusaka before becoming, in 2013, a full-time artist. Her work explores and challenges toxic societal norms that undermine the rights and values ​​of women of color. This reflection takes place in the context of post-colonial African nations, where many ideals borrowed from the West have been assimilated to African traditions and cultures, in front of the new norm. Culture – supposedly fluid, dynamic and subject to evolution – is then treated as an inflexible norm. The purpose of her work is to normalize darkness; to establish what it really means to exist and navigate the life of a black woman in Africa. Her work also focuses on the need to de-objectify women’s bodies where, socially and culturally, women of color do not own their own bodies.

Her work is mainly manifested in oil paintings and mixed media collages that feature traces of fabric and used and / or ready-to-throw items such as wrapping paper, old newspapers, cardboard, and scraps. paper bags. The use of fabric symbolizes the alien ideals that have been instilled in its rigid culture, while the use of items ready to be discarded represents the worth, resilience and worth of women and humanity as a collective. , which exist as disposable entities in the hands of a system that was designed to devalue black women.

She entered the StART Foundation Trust’s “Artists in the Making” competition, where she was one of six selected winners. She was nominated for the Ngoma Prize for the Julia Malunga Prize and was one of the 100 finalists in the 2016 and 2017 L’atelier Barclays competition. She has exhibited locally and internationally, and has also participated in various international art workshops such as the Thupelo International Artist Workshop in Cape Town, South Africa, and the Tulipamwe International Artist Workshop in Namibia. She also took part in “La Teinturerie”, a residency program of Pro Helvetia in Madagascar.