colour of a Nation

Africa is known for its bold, unapologetic use of colour. Stories are told in pigments, tones and hues; a kaleidoscope as diverse as the cultures and peoples of the continent. For the initiative Colours of Africa, a collaborative project with Google Arts & Culture, we asked 60 African creatives to capture the unique spirit of their country in a colour which represents home to them.

The projects they have created are personal and distinct stories of Africa, put into images, videos, texts and illustrations. Each artist has also attempted to articulate what being African means to their identity and view of the world.

Colour:Red Regalia
Country:Malawi

Artwork Rationale:

The red colour on our flag stands for blood, which is life. Blood unifies us, it runs through different tribes and races.
Malawi is known as ‘The warm heart of Africa’ and is represented by a red heart since Malawians are well known for their friendliness and warmth to strangers.
My artwork reflects a jolly mood of dancers signifying the spirit of our ancestors. Made with clays from our ground where our ancestors lie, the background is rough textured denoting the harsh environment we live in but disguised by our jovial mood. The dancing figures are done with various red tones of dusty pastels that are momentary as nature. The overlapping dancers mirror the past and present. As the beating heart of Africa, a drum beats, dressed in red the colour that unifies us, our blood blazes as fire that continues through the generations.

What it means to be African

To be African is to embrace the community; worry about friends, neighbours, cousins, uncles, nephews, nieces, chiefs, elders and the ancestors. Africa is love; we dance, drink, eat, and pray together. Holding on to our morals, beliefs and traditions we remain Africans.

Biography

Eva Chikabadwa was born in Blantyre, Malawi in 1980. She graduated from the University of Malawi with a bachelor’s degree in social science, majoring in sociology in 2003.
Always a passionate artist, she went back to university in 2005 to study Fine arts for another four years. Eva did her masters in Fine arts at the University of Cape Town, and is currently doing her PhD in the same course with the University of Pretoria, South Africa.
As a sculptor and a painter, Chikabadwa has exhibited locally and internationally since 2002. Three solo exhibitions and more than 25 collaboratively, covering themes like culture, politics and indigenous mythology.
Her masters project explored mythology, focusing on colonial and missionary misrepresentation of African religious practice, particularly the M’bona beliefs of the Man’ganja from southern Malawi.
She is currently a lecturer in painting and ceramics at the Malawi University of Science and Technology.