9 rooms in Performer and Participant
This display features Samson Kambalu’s short, improvised videos, which he calls ‘Nyau cinema’
Kambalu made the five videos in this room while travelling in Europe. Creating these scenes was a way for him to interact with other people. He invited strangers to film him as he performed spontaneous actions and posted the results on social media. Kambalu’s sense of the absurd and deliberately unpolished editing have an affinity with early silent comedy.
All the videos follow self-imposed guidelines around factors such as duration, acting style and audience engagement. Kambalu was inspired by the films he watched while growing up within Chewa culture in 1980s Malawi. Projectionists would re-edit films for local audiences, removing anything boring and sometimes suddenly cutting to an entirely different film.
The phrase ‘Nyau cinema’ relates to the Chewa people’s practice of ritualised masking, performance and play. ‘Africa is a place of improvisation’, Kambalu has said, ‘and this is what I’m bringing in my work, taking Malawi everywhere with me’.
Monster Chetwynd, A Tax Haven Run By Women 2010–1
A Tax Haven Run By Women is an installation of sculptures and costumes made by Chetwynd that she uses for live performances. These imagine an anarchic game-show style competition between two teams, ‘Women Who Refuse to Grow Old Gracefully’, inspired by the actor and singer Mae West, and ‘The Oppressed Purée’. The teams compete via a dance-off for a ride to a tax haven (a place with very low tax for foreign investors). They travel in the Catbus, a character from Hayao Miyazaki’s animated film My Neighbour Totoro (1988). Meanwhile, other performers act as a male cult leader, and seals, controlling the soundtrack. Chetwynd’s performances and costumes are absurd, irreverent and spontaneous. However, her work often stems from research into economics, anthropology and maverick individuals. A Tax Haven Run By Women reflects on the similarity between cults and tax havens. Both tend to exist in remote locations isolated from regular society. Chetwynd says, ‘The performance is weirdly a combination of goofy, dreamlike Mae West women running a tax haven which is this wonderful place where you do actually want to be, and the kind of scary arsehole cult leader gone wrong.’
Gallery label, April 2025
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artworks in Samson Kambalu
Art in this room
Monster Chetwynd
A Tax Haven Run By Women
2010–1
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Samson Kambalu
Homage to the Square
2013
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Samson Kambalu
Fly Swatter
2014
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Samson Kambalu
Two Mushroom Clouds
2012
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Samson Kambalu
A Thousand Years
2013
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Samson Kambalu
Nude Ascending Stairs
2011