Samson Kambalu

b. 1975, Malawi

Lives and works in Oxford

Professor at Magdalena College, Oxford

The Oxford based artist and author Samson Kambalu, studied at the University of Malawi (BA Fine Art and Ethnomusicology, 1995-99); Nottingham Trent University (MA Fine Art, 2002-03) and Chelsea College of Art and Design (PhD, 2011 – 15). He has shown his work around the world, including Dakar Biennale (2014, 2016), the Liverpool Biennial (2004, 2016) and was included in All the World’s Futures, Venice Biennale 2015, curated by Okwui Enwezor. His winning Fourth Plinth proposal Antelope will exhibit on Trafalgar Sqaure from September 2022 to 2024. Kambalu has been awarded research fellowships with Yale University and  Smithsonian Institution  and is an associate professor of fine art at Ruskin College and fellow at Magdalen College, Oxford University.

Samson Kambalu works in a variety of media, including site-specific installation, video, performance and literature. His work is autobiographical and approaches art as an arena for critical thought and sovereign activities. His basic influences are Situationism,  the Nyau prestation social structures of his native Malawi and the Protestant tradition of inquiry, criticism and dissent.

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