Artist in Residence, Stockholm, 21 April – 18 May 2026

Bio Banji Chona is a Scholar of Zambezian Earth whose practice explores questions of relationality, ancestral continuities and reclamation. Working across storytelling as healing practice, and community-based engagements, she interrogates imposed ways of knowing shaped by colonial and imperial ‘inheritances’ while offering alternative ways of being. At the center of her work is a self-formulated methodology called Radical Zambezian Reimagination. This is a practice of rethinking spatial, cultural, and ecological imaginaries through the epistemologies of communities shaped by the Zambezi River and its tributaries. The Zambezi serves not only as a geographic reference but as a conceptual starting point, a way to think with water systems as interconnected, relational networks. Fed by numerous tributaries and ultimately flowing into the Indian Ocean, the Zambezi becomes part of a larger hydrological continuum that links rivers to oceans, rains to aquifers, wetlands to clouds. Through this lens, knowledge is understood as fluid, migratory and shaped by movement, seasonality, and interdependence. Banji has exhibited her work in solo and group exhibitions in Italy, South Africa, Norway, the U.S.A, Germany and Senegal.

Photo: Caleb LaTreille

Banji Chona

The Residency is organized by The National Museums of world Culture Sweden in collaboration with IASPIS, Konstfack, Southnord and the Nordic Art Association, with Banji Chona and Katarina Spik Skum. The residency is part of the project “Bringing the Objects to Life – and Challenging the Museums’ Colonial Histories.