Samson Kambalu

His first book, an autobiographical narrative entitled The Jive Talker or How to Get a British Passport, was published by Jonathan Cape (Random House) in July 2008, and in August 2008 by Free Press (Simon & Schuster). His second novel, Uccello's Vineyard, published in 2012, is in The Book Lovers, a collection of artist novels at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Antwerp.

One of his most well known artworks is Holy Ball, a football plastered in pages of the Bible. Kambalu held an exhibition of 24 "Holy Balls" at Chancellor College in 2000 at which he invited the visitors to “exercise and exorcise”. He has since shown his work internationally. In 2015 he was included in Okwui Enwezor's All the World's Futures at the 56th Venice Biennale. In November 2015 a judge in Venice dismissed a complaint filed by the Italian situationist Gianfranco Sanguinetti against the Venice Biennale and Kambalu with regard to one of his installations, Sanguinetti Breakout Area.

Kambalu was born in Malawi, where he attended Kamuzu Academy, the "Eton of Africa". He graduated from the University of Malawi's Chancellor College, Zomba in 1999. Kambalu completed his MA in Fine Art at Nottingham Trent University in 2003 and wrote his PhD at Chelsea College of Art and Design, looking at how the problematic of the gift and the general economy animates various aspects of his art practice.

Samson Kambalu (born 1975) is a Malawi-born artist, academic and author who trained as a fine artist and ethnomusicologist at the University of Malawi's Chancellor College. He is a Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford.