Mulenga Jestina

Mulenga Jestina Mulenga works across installation, sculpture, painting and photography to examine socio-cultural discourses relating to the legacy of colonialism. Mulenga has recently been conceptualising work that examines the threads connecting Zambia and the UK, specifically the ongoing socio-political ramifications of Brexit and the newfound inability for Britons to identify as members of the European Union. She relates this to her own experience of holding conflicting and sometimes opposing identities. Specifically, Mulenga has also been investigating a skull discovered in Zambia in 1831, now housed in the Natural History Museum. Through her explorations, the artist wishes to question how such institutions relate to the common person and how one can access them and cross their thresholds as a black woman. In reference to the UK government’s claim that the skull belongs to humankind and must stay in the UK because the Zambian climate is unfavourable for its preservation, Mulenga asks, “What could be more favourable for my ancestors than to rest in peace [in Zambia]?”