Portrait of sculptor and painter Eva Chikabadwa
Design Indaba
Cape Town, South Africa
Malawian sculptor and painter Eva Chikabadwa was selected by Design Indaba to take part in our collaborative initiative with Google Arts & Culture, titled Colours of Africa. 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, 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.
- Title: Portrait of sculptor and painter Eva Chikabadwa
- Original Source: Design Indaba
- What it Means to be African: To be African is to appreciate the drum, dance to the music and drink together, then pray together. Africa is love. To be African is to hold on to our moral values, no matter where new influences come from.
- Subject: Eva Chikabadwa
- Rationale: Malawi is known as the warm heart of Africa and is represented often by a red heart. Malawians are well known for their friendliness and warmth. For my Colours of Africa submission I created an artwork, made with materials like coloured clays and ash from our ground and painted the spirits of our people and our ancestors with red tones. The human figures in the painting overlap, both past and present. The beating heart of Africa, a drum beat we can dance to – dressed in red clothing – that continues through the generations. Red fabrics are used by the different tribes of the nation like the Chewa, the Ngoni, and the Lomwe during customary celebrations. Red is a display of vitality and is seen as the most attractive colour. Even Malawian political parties use the colour red to show brilliance.
- Project: Colors of Africa
- Location: Malawi
- Lead Quote: Malawi is known as the warm heart of Africa and is represented often by a red heart.
- Hex Code: 751C26
- Colour Choice: Red Regalia
- 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. Always a passionate artist, she went back to university two years after graduating to study fine arts in Cape Town, South Africa. As a sculptor and a painter, Chikabadwa has exhibited locally and internationally since 2002. Three solo exhibitions and more than 25 as part of collected works. Chikabadwa includes themes around culture, politics and indigenous mythology in her work. Her graduation at the University of Cape town Michaelis School of Fine Art explored mythology with a focus 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 industrial ceramics at the Malawi University of Science and Technology.
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