David Makala - ? BLACK. BLACKED ?

David Makala (b.1983) is a self-taught artist from Lusaka, Zambia, where he currently lives and works. Makala is renowned for his versatility with materials, blending sculpture, painting, printmaking, digital art and performance. Makala considers his studio practice a form of research space where thoughts and ideas gather, resulting in exquisite pieces of art. For David, the processes involved in production also allow for greater interrogations of themes such as identity politics and mapping. Makala works from his studio in Chilenje, which he intentionally chose as a way of working with the local community.

? BLACK. BLACKED ?

? BLACK. BLACKED ? is an exhibition culmination of the works David Makala produced during his on-site residency at Gate 44 in 2022. He experimented with a variety of materials and techniques including gum-print, monotype, and photopolymer etching. His method involved composing images through the layering of different techniques, resulting in prints, sculptures and installations exploring the intersecting themes of the artist’s contemporary social role in the context of Zambian postcolonial identity refusing the western fabricated narrative, grounded in a discussion framework based on the differences between white/western identity and “Black identity” in the making–Black/zambian identity as described and intended by the same whites/westerners/colonialist.
The title of the exhibition synthesizes David’s investigations in a precise question: Are we Black or have we been painted Black? And seems to suggest that the process of identity definition – i.e. being Black – should not respond to colonial and postcolonial intellectual and cultural interferences but should be carried on internally in order to stay Black and not be blacked.

Zambia Graph Paper
Screen-printing, gum print on Laurier paper 250 g/m², iron grid
Print size: 40,5 x 60 – Frame size: large 50 cm x high 70 cm x width 5 cm
Unique pieces
Price: 600 € (each – frame is included)

Gum-print, chine collée, pencil hand intervention of the artist on Laurier paper 250 g/m²
42 x 35,5 cm
2022
Price: 450 € (each)