Anawana HalobaLooking for Mukamusaba – An Experimental Opera (2024-25)

Looking for Mukamusaba – An Experimental Opera (2024-25)

Mixed media; sound ap. 25'
Music Sidiki Camara

Anawana Haloba’s work is part of an ongoing sonic exploration of Southern African oral traditions. In this piece, the artist uses speaker drivers—the components within loudspeakers that generate sound—to create eight sculptural forms that act as reverberation chambers. Some of these sculptures draw their shapes from traditional marriage and initiation ceremonies, while others are entirely new and invented by the artist. 

The work functions as an operatic sculpture, featuring characters that blend myth and history. Central among them is Mukamusaba, whose name in siLozi—the language spoken by the Lozi people, primarily in south-western Zambia and Namibia—means “You shall fear her/them” or “the one who embodies greatness.” Alongside her are Alice Lenshina, a self-proclaimed prophetess who founded the anti-colonial Lumpa Church (1953), and Lucy Sichone, a civil rights activist and educator who was active in the United National Independence Party, then Zambia’s ruling party and who established the Zambia Civic Education Association (1993). Haloba refers to these three women as her “female Fanons”, invoking the revolutionary spirit of Frantz Fanon—a Martinique-born thinker whose work explored the psychological impact of colonialism on both coloniser and colonised.  

Drawing from songs and oral traditions, Haloba brings the stories of these three women to life, using opera and masquerade to share their narratives. The installation becomes a threshold—a space between worlds—where voices from past and present struggles are given form. Through this, Haloba reimagines ideas of community and solidarity, turning collective grief and anger into what she calls “a loud song of resistance.” These voices call and respond to one another throughout the space, sharing stories of grief and suffering from around the world.