Gazellah Bruder is a highly accomplished and internationally-known artist of Tolai and Mekeo ancestry who lives and works in Papua New Guinea (PNG). She is a painter, printmaker, sculptor, book illustrator, and textile artist, and has also worked in film and television. Her work focuses on social issues, gender, sexuality, and environmental change and she uses her art to promote dialogue about these critical issues. Bruder is particularly concerned with women’s inequality and domestic violence in Papua New Guinea. Much of her art expresses her insights into women’s experiences and their journeys in life. Countering Euro-American stereotypical depictions of the people of Melanesia—a region of Oceania that extends from Papua New Guinea and West Papua to Fiji—that long represented them as “primitive,” exoticized or eroticized caricatures, or as anthropological “types,” Bruder’s representations of Papua New Guinea women capture their personalities, experiences, and resilience. Her work has received national recognition and in 2020 the PNG government selected her and four other artists to participate in the United Nations’ initiative to produce advocacy materials to prevent and respond to violence against women.
LIA Portraits w/ Gazellah Bruder
Papua New Guinea gained independence on September 16, 1975. Fifty years later, the country is celebrating this historic anniversary with numerous cultural initiatives worldwide. WanBel is one of these projects: a global alliance of partner institutions under the motto “Celebrate our History, Inspire our Future.” https://grassi-voelkerkunde.skd.museum/en/exhibitions/reinventing-grassiskd/rapid-response/
WanBel – 50 Years of Independence: Papua New Guinea @ GRASSI Museum Leipzig
Nolwazi Mbali Mahlangu was an artist in residence at LIA programme from November 2025 until January 2026. “I am working on a performance-as-research project situated in the Herrnhut Moravian Archives, responding to histories and contemporary realities of migration through a faith-inflected lens. The work takes the form of a play/prayer/performance that interrogates what it means to pray in the language of the strange, while holding the theological provocation re rapela ka leleme la Modimo, that is: we pray in the tongue of God. Titled The Archive Arrives Tomorrow: Postkarten aus dem Süden, the performance treats the archive not as static record but as a migrating body, arriving late, speaking in fragments, demanding embodied listening. Methodologically, it draws on ritual performance and archival dramaturgy. Where prayer continues to be method and mode of resistance.”
Radio Blau Interview w/ Nolwazi Mbali Mahlangu
“I’m Marcellas Njonji, a multidisciplinary artist from Cameroon with a Bachelor’s degree in Performing and Visual Arts from the University of Bamenda, 2019. As a passionate mixed-media and performance artist, I create art that ignites social, cultural, and environmental consciousness. As a 2022 laureate of the Cameroonian Cultural Network (CCN), I’ve used my art to raise awareness about the complexities of the Anglophone Crisis in Cameroon. Additionally, I’ve promoted gender equality and inclusivity through my program WOMAN’Art, which fosters the growth of female artists in Bamenda.”
LIA Portraits w/ Marcellas Njonji
“I work from memory as a living territory. My artistic practice intertwines the traces of northern Nicaragua with Mesoamerican roots that still breathe through songs, bodies, and mountains. From displacement, motherhood, and spirituality, my work seeks to transform pain into a gesture of collective healing. My practice moves between performance, sound, installations, language, and curatorial work understood as an act of care. I believe in art as a way to invoke what has no name — to listen to the voices suspended between absence and hope. In each action, the body becomes an offering, silence turns into memory, and creation opens as a space where life can speak again.”
LIA Portraits w/ Illimani de los Andes
She is a self-taught, multidisciplinary visual artist from Kilimanjaro, Tanzania. Her work draws from personal experience, using art as both expression and resistance. Working with strings, nails, and acrylics in mixed media and installation, Lilian explores themes of identity, resilience, healing, and visibility. Growing up with a physical disability shaped her perspective and deepened her sensitivity to questions of belonging and representation. Through her practice, she transforms these experiences into powerful visual narratives that challenge exclusion and celebrate strength. Each piece becomes a dialogue between fragility and power, absence and presence, self and society. Her works have been exhibited locally and internationally, including at Arts and Human Rights: Conversing Multiplicities at Concordia University in Canada. She has received recognition as a Mandela Washington Fellow, Tanzanian UN Youth Fellow, Africa No Filter Cover Star, and Tanzanian Sheroe, as well as awards from the Emergent Arts Space and Mulika Tanzania Arts and Human Rights competitions. For Lilian, art is both a language and a space of healing a way to reimagine how the world sees difference and to reclaim visibility through hope, beauty, emotion, and truth.
LIA Portraits w/ Lilian Munuo
Ndako Nghipandulwa (born 1988 in Kwanza-Sul) is a Namibian visual artist whose multidisciplinary practice encompasses nail and string art, fabric art, oil and acrylic painting, murals, and mixed media works. With a style that blends precision with imagination, his work is defined by a bold engagement with texture, geometry, and narrative. Ndako’s creative path is deeply rooted in both his personal history and academic background. Originally trained in civil engineering, he developed a strong foundation in mathematics, geometry, and project management skills that continue to inform the structural and conceptual elements of his work. This technical knowledge, combined with a vivid sense of visual storytelling, allows him to produce artworks that are not only aesthetically striking but also intellectually layered and meticulously crafted. often overlooked become instruments of expression in his hands. Through deliberate tension, intricate patterning, and a meditative use of color and texture, Ndako transforms these materials into evocative forms that explore identity, experience, and perception. His pieces often blur the boundaries between craft, fine art, and design, inviting viewers to engage with both the detail and the emotion embedded within each work. Ndako has participated in several group exhibitions throughout Namibia and beyond, culminating in his first solo exhibition in 2022. He has also completed numerous commissioned works for individual collectors, businesses, and institutions, ranging from nail and string pieces to murals and live art performances. He is equally passionate about community engagement and education, having facilitated workshops and collaborative art projects that promote creative expression and technical skill development. Whether working on canvas, walls, or unconventional surfaces, Ndako approaches every project with a commitment to innovation, precision, and emotional resonance. His work is inspired by a combination of observation, lived experience, imagination, and the deep, often unspoken connections that tie us to each other and the world around us.
LIA Portraits w/ Ndako Nghipandulwa
Nolwazi Mbali Mahlangu, South Africa “I am working on a performance-as-research project situated in the Herrnhut Moravian Archives, responding to histories and contemporary realities of migration through a faith-inflected lens. The work takes the form of a play/prayer/performance that interrogates what it means to pray in the language of the strange, while holding the theological provocation re rapela ka leleme la Modimo, that is: we pray in the tongue of God. Titled The Archive Arrives Tomorrow: Postkarten aus dem Süden, the performance treats the archive not as static record but as a migrating body, arriving late, speaking in fragments, demanding embodied listening. Methodologically, it draws on ritual performance and archival dramaturgy. Where prayer continues to be method and mode of resistance.”
LIA Portraits w/ Nolwazi Mbali Mahlangu
Mars Rodriguez, School of Visual Arts (NYC) - LIA Interview Mars Rodriguez is a multidisciplinary artist born and raised in New York City, with roots reaching to Nicaragua and El Salvador. She works across whatever medium is shouting at her loudest: sculpture, performance, textiles, printmaking, painting, and video. Her practice is rooted in transformation of materials, memory, and emotion. She often works with found, salvaged, or donated objects, things others discard or hold onto tightly. She creates using what's available, not just by necessity, but because these materials carry lived experience. Her work is tactile, emotional, intuitive, and layered, often blending softness with rupture, ritual with reflection. Whether she's stitching fabric, sculpting forms, or building immersive installations, she creates spaces that hold grief, survival, motherhood, and cultural memory. Her pieces can feel like altars, offerings, or like fragments of something once whole. She sees her process as a way of witnessing, remembering, and reshaping what's been left behind.
LIA Portraits w/ Mars Rodriguez
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