Samson Kambalu was born in Malawi in 1975. He graduated from the University of Malawi with a BA in Fine Art and Ethnomusicology in 1999. Following graduation he was made an associate lecturer in Fine Art at the University’s Chancellor College. In 2000 he was the artist in residence at the Thami- Mnyele Foundation in Amsterdam. During 2002 – 2003 he studied for an MA in Fine Art at the Nottingham Trent University, and was featured in Bloomberg New Contemporaries in 2004. He has since 2000 shown his work internationally, in Malawi, Europe, the USA, the UK, and Japan. In 2005, he was awarded the Decibel Visual Arts award by the Arts council of England and nominated for the Fritchy Prize in the Netherlands. Kambalu’s first book, a portrait of the artist as a young African entitled The Jive Talker, was published by Random House and Simon and Schuster in 2008. It was named one of Sunday Telegraph’s books of the year. Kambalu lives in London.