Samson Kambalu
Flag Factory 7, 2022
24 Digital Prints on Archival Paper
Ground floor main corridor, Mile End Hospital
Samson Kambalu is an Oxford-based artist, ethnomusicologist and writer from Malawi whose work spans video, installation, fiction and performance art.
Flag Factory is a collection of prints which draw on Kambalu’s childhood memory of collecting, swapping and matching the flag cards from packets of bubble gum. Each individual print is a fictional flag that adopts the graphic appearance of geometric Western abstraction, and at the same time resonates with the vibrant colours and bold patterns of West African textiles.
Kambalu's use and fusion of diverse social and artistic tropes is intentionally mischievous and provocative. He says: “I’m a cosmopolitan. I believe in people, I’m not too sure about countries. I think there should be a thousand countries every day. I like the idea that every moment is a country of its own.”
About the artist
Samson Kambalu (1975, Malawi) lives and works in Oxford where he is an Associate Professor of Fine Art and a lifelong fellow at Magdalen College, Oxford University. Kambalu’s Trafalgar Square Fourth Plinth Commission, Antelope, was unveiled in Sept 2022. His work Black Jack was featured on Mandela Walk, Southbank Centre in 2021, and he has been included in international exhibitions and projects including All the World’s Futures, 56th Venice Biennale; Athens Biennale; Dakar Biennial; Tokyo International Art Festival and Liverpool Biennial. He has had solo exhibitions at Culturgest, Lisbon, Portugal; Modern Art Oxford; PEER Gallery, London; Mu.ZEE, Ostend, Belgium; Whitechapel Gallery, London; Logan Centre, Chicago, U.S.A; Kunsthalle Mainz, Germany.