Emerging Zambian artist, former UN worker, and activist Esther Hadassah Mwema explores digital inequalities in her innovative art. In 2022 she was awarded with the Mozilla Creative Media award for her work 'AfroGrids' which uses afro-futuristic storytelling to examine the relationship between internet infrastructure and digital colonialism.
Esther Mwema will speak about her work in a talk featuring Afro-Grids. We are very excited to welcome this wonderful young artist to the B3 Conference program. We will also be presenting Afro-Grids in the B3 Forum Moving Image.
Esther Mwema uses storytelling to paint the relationship between big tech and digital colonialism. In her AFRO-GRIDS project she marries decolonial narratives and imaginative storytelling to explore the reality of undersea internet cables throughout the African continent. In her first-ever Master Class, the emerging artist and open internet leader will teach how storytelling can be used as a method for challenging digital colonialism, injustice, inequality, and power asymmetries. This Master Class offers explorations on how storytelling as a methodology can foster new imagination and play a central role for envisioning alternative realities for just and equitable digital futures. Esther Mwema shares her creative process in decolonial constructs for counter narratives, character development and indeed, constructive reimaginings.