Details — Click to read

Untitled by David Daut Makala is a unique piece from a group of four, each composed of a wooden frame overlaid with an iron grid. The grid partially reveals an image of a 250.000-vear-old Rhodesian human skull, layered with a page from a christian hymn book featuring bilingual religious text in English and a local Zambian language. These elements were produced by using a gum print process on a screen-printed graph paper.

Through this work, Makala grounds his practice in a reflection on identity. He considers identity as shaped by personal and vernacular experience, but also by colonial and postcolonial narratives that continue to define Blackness from a Western point of view. Therefore, his work brings out the agency of the government system in post-colonial Zambia, where the individual investigates his own self as a likelihood created by the external context or self-determined.

Wood frame, iron grid, gum print, and screen printing on Laurier paper 250 gsm

David Daut Makala

David Daut 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.