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Massa Lemu
Massa Lemu is a visual artist and writer from Malawi who works in painting, drawing, performance and text-based conceptual work. He has described his art as "interventions and descriptions of the disputed social space we all live in".
Massa Lemu was born in 1979 in Blantyre. His early artistic influence was his late uncle, David Zuze, who Lemu watched painting as a hobby while he was younger.
Lemu received his Bachelor of Education Degree (with a major in Fine Arts) from the University of Malawi in 2003 and Master of Arts in Painting from the Savannah College of Art and Design (USA) in 2009.
Lemu's paintings include combinations of natural, human-made, and imaginary aspects as part of commenting on issues. His performance work includes using street corners and other sites often occupied by undocumented people, as part of work about migration.
Lemu has shown his work in galleries in Malawi and the United States. His work has been reviewed in publications including Texphrastic, Cite (Houston, Texas), Reflections (Blantyre, Malawi) and Steve Chimombo's book titled Aids, Artists and Authors (Zomba, Malawi).
He has taught courses at universities including Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia, and Rice University in Houston, Texas.
Lemu was a Core Critical Studies Fellow in the Glassell School of Art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston from 2010 to 2012, where he researched and wrote about contemporary African art. Lemu researched the biopolitics of contemporary African art collectives as a PhD student at Stellenbosch University.
PRECARIOT is a self-portrait of the artist as a continental drifter in perpetual precarity. Precariot is a term that combines the word “proletariat” with “precarious” to describe an emerging “barbarian” class of migrant laborers and professionals living and working precariously, holding temporary underpaid jobs, lacking a political voice and increasingly frustrated by their living and working conditions. Lemu says that he is attracted by its revolutionary aspects, embracing the label and adopting it as his title. For Lemu, the old patriot was proud of, and ready to die for their fatherland. The “precariot,” however, is one whose only possession is the unstable and indeterminate terrain of precarity, staking claims and maneuvering in this uncertain landscape. PRECARIOT focuses on processes of inspection and scrutiny, labeling and branding to highlight the realities of migration.
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Massa Lemu
Massa Lemu is a visual artist and writer from Malawi who works in painting, drawing, performance and text-based conceptual work. He has described his art as "interventions and descriptions of the disputed social space we all live in".
Massa Lemu was born in 1979 in Blantyre. His early artistic influence was his late uncle, David Zuze, who Lemu watched painting as a hobby while he was younger.
Lemu received his Bachelor of Education Degree (with a major in Fine Arts) from the University of Malawi in 2003 and Master of Arts in Painting from the Savannah College of Art and Design (USA) in 2009.
Lemu's paintings include combinations of natural, human-made, and imaginary aspects as part of commenting on issues. His performance work includes using street corners and other sites often occupied by undocumented people, as part of work about migration.
Lemu has shown his work in galleries in Malawi and the United States. His work has been reviewed in publications including Texphrastic, Cite (Houston, Texas), Reflections (Blantyre, Malawi) and Steve Chimombo's book titled Aids, Artists and Authors (Zomba, Malawi).
He has taught courses at universities including Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia, and Rice University in Houston, Texas.
Lemu was a Core Critical Studies Fellow in the Glassell School of Art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston from 2010 to 2012, where he researched and wrote about contemporary African art. Lemu researched the biopolitics of contemporary African art collectives as a PhD student at Stellenbosch University.
PRECARIOT is a self-portrait of the artist as a continental drifter in perpetual precarity. Precariot is a term that combines the word “proletariat” with “precarious” to describe an emerging “barbarian” class of migrant laborers and professionals living and working precariously, holding temporary underpaid jobs, lacking a political voice and increasingly frustrated by their living and working conditions. Lemu says that he is attracted by its revolutionary aspects, embracing the label and adopting it as his title. For Lemu, the old patriot was proud of, and ready to die for their fatherland. The “precariot,” however, is one whose only possession is the unstable and indeterminate terrain of precarity, staking claims and maneuvering in this uncertain landscape. PRECARIOT focuses on processes of inspection and scrutiny, labeling and branding to highlight the realities of migration.