PIERRE MUKEBA

IERRE MUKEBA IS CONGO-BORN His grandfather was a celebrated realism artist in the Congo, deprived of opportunities due his underprivileged circumstances. As a small child, Mukeba watched his uncle sculpt and draw. When he was thirteen, his family fled civil war to a Zambian refugee camp, then to Harare in Zimbabwe, before gaining asylum in South Australia, after the Zimbabwean regime rendered impossible any future for non-nationals in that country. He soon fell ill here, largely as a result of accumulated anxiety from feeling alienated and culturally dislodged. A decade later, Mukeba won the Churchie National Emerging Art Prize in 2017 and has now featured in numerous exhibitions. met with Mukeba in his new studio in central Adelaide, where the walls and floor were covered in new works.