“Frature Empire”, curated by Bruno Marchand, is the most complete presentation of Samson Kambalu’s work to date, and will be open to the public between October 2nd and February 6th, 2022.

In what is his first programming for Culturgest as a visual arts programmer, Bruno Marchand chose the work of Samson Kambalu, born in Malawi, where he graduated in visual arts and ethnomusicology, residing in Oxford, UK, where he is the only one African countryman.

“We hope [a mostra] bring us some idea of ​​Africanity. The way he handles this challenge is very curious: he uses above all the way of humor and subtle critical reflection, and he manages to deal effectively with a complex problem, removing all moralism from the conversation”, explained the curator, during a press visit.

His interest in the work of Samson Kambalu was born during the 2015 Venice Biennale, when Bruno Marchand came across a set of short films, similar to those in silent cinema, that enchanted him.

Since then, he has always followed his work and nurtured the idea of ​​one day organizing an exhibition with the artist’s work, which is why, three years later, he chose to order the Bienal’s catalogue.

The opportunity for the exhibition came this year, “at an important moment”, when Samson Kambalu won the latest edition of the Fourth Plinth (Quarto Plinth), a prestigious sculpture competition in England and one of the most famous public art awards. world.

The model of the competition is the piece that opens this exhibition, whose entrance is flanked by an illuminated wooden structure, which imitates the old supports for film titles at the entrance of cinemas.

This is just one of the various structures of the genre that accompany the exhibition, each with a different phrase, such as the title of a film, which creates a mental image in the visitor to refer to the cinema.

In the first room, in a small dot, is a sculpture that won the Fourth Plinth, which reproduces a photograph taken in 1914, which shows John Chilembwe, a pan-Africanist and one of the first anti-colonial activists, founder of a Church in Malawi, side by side with the English missionary John Chorley.

Both are wearing hats, which at the time was prohibited: colonial rules dictated that Africans were not allowed to wear them as in the presence of whites, which made this image and its dissemination a subversive act.

Chilembwe was murdered a year later and his church destroyed. The images of the destruction of the church are displayed, in photographs, on the living room wall, in a symbology of the destruction of power.

In the sculpture “Antelope – Ghost Model for the Fourth Plinth”, two figures appear with different scales, with the African fighting for independence being greater, the colonizing white being smaller.

According to Bruno Marchand, in the square where the life-size figures are displayed, looking from a certain angle, the two figures are the same size.

The second room presents a set of Nyau films (the Chewa tribes’ word for “excess”), via the walls, which are cinematographic pieces with less than a minute, which can be called “attraction cinema”, that is, “can cause astonishment, the narrative is secondary,” explained Bruno Marchand. On the wall of the room will be placed in a text that enumerates the rules for Nyau cinema.

In the third room, the idea of ​​the mask is dominant, an important artifact for the Nyau, the secret brotherhood of the people of Malawi, whose most important ritual is the Great Dance, practiced in an arena using zoo or anthropomorphic masks, and representing “the reverse of capitalism and the idea of ​​chaos, or suspension of morality”.

In the center of this room is a large elephant – the second figure in the hierarchy of the brotherhood – whose lining fabric comes from the cassocks worn by Samson Kambalu when he has formal actions in London.

The elephant faces the Fourth Plinth, through the connecting doors between rooms, because there is a connection between both pieces, as Bruno Marchand explains: the figure of the elephant, in the Grande Dança, is a structure with two men inside, one lowered and another raised, which have to be coordinated in order to function.

The two rooms that follow are “connected to each other, because they tell the story of an episode where a Samson happened”.

In 2015, the artist, while a scholarship holder at Yale University, found in the Beinecke library one of the largest archives of documents and another ephemeral one on situationism – a cultural and political movement, providing greater expression in Europe in the 1960s -, gathered throughout decades by Gianfranco Sanguinetti, one of the last situationists still alive.

The archive had been sold the previous year, in a decision considered by many to be contrary to the principles and values ​​of the movement, which has always defended free access to culture.

In an attempt to counter this privatization, Samson Kambalu photographed its entire content and exhibited at the 2015 Venice Biennale, both of which were sued by Sanguinetti, who lost the case in court.

This entire file is now exposed in one of the Culturgest rooms, while in the other room next door a feature film is shown, which reproduces the entire trial process, with Samson himself, with a lawyer, the real allegations, which raise questions as “what is copyright, the idea of ​​ownership, authorship or copying”, highlighted the curator.

The film is called “A war game”, a title inspired by a game invented by the French philosopher Guy Debord, author of “The Society of Spectacle”, one of the most famous situationists, which is extensively documented in this archive.

Then there is a Nyau cinema, where several films are broadcast, all of them with some connection to other plays or philosophical references, such as “The Allegory of the Cave” by Plato, or a phrase “No one can enter twice in the same river”, by Heraclitus.

Philosophers assume great importance in the life and work of Samson Kambalu, who was born into a very poor family, whose greatest treasure was a cabinet full of books they called “the diptych”.

From this heterogeneous selection of books, it was those on philosophy, in particular by Nietzsche, that most interested Samson Kambalu, with his penchant for abstract thought.

The penultimate room is composed of cardboard figures of Africans wearing uniforms similar to those applied by British army officers, in an allusion to a dance created by the Malawians – “Beni” -, in which they wear those and parody Western protocol.

On the walls, several flags that result from the artist’s work, from fusing territory flags and dismantling them.

At the end of the exhibition, a set of postcards with several merged flags, these less territorial and more abstract, in a pictorial minimalism that the artist calls “geometric abstraction”, according to the curator.

In each room, there will be texts contextualizing the pieces – explains curator Bruno Marchand -, because “conceptual art needs context to make the effect it is supposed to do”.