One of the Zambia’s leading visual artists, Stary Mwaba channels the haunting legacy of Zambia’s “black mountains” — massive heaps of mining waste that dot the Copperbelt skyline — into striking artworks that critique industrial decay, environmental injustice and childhood memories.
Highlighting the profound personal and collective resonance of these toxic landscapes, Mwaba recalls the “black mountains” known locally as “mu danger”, a place children were warned against—an imposing, forbidding presence on the horizon that seemed alive with peril.
His work—which spans painting, installation and mixed media—transforms this childhood dread into visual statements on environmental injustice often depicting ghostly forms of children navigating surreal, monochromatic terrain textured with mineral dust and rust tones.
In some pieces, toy trucks laden with blackened rocks appear under oppressive skies, evoking both industrial scale and fragile human vulnerability. Others depict figures tethered to floating piles, suspended in limbo between past and present.
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