Profile
Esther Mwema is a visual artist, creative prose writer, and digital inequalities practitioner based in Zambia. Esther takes technological advancements and interprets them within the African context through creative prose and visual art. In her artistic research, she engages in communal learning and open internet leadership, and her work reflects underrepresented and at-risk communities, serving as a site of heritage. In 2022, Esther was awarded Mozilla’s Creative Media Award for her project “Afro-Grids” which uses storytelling as a methodology to interrogate the role of undersea cables built by big tech and digital colonialism in Africa. She exhibited this work at B3 Bienal of the Moving Image in Frankfurt (2022), at the Forum on Internet Freedom in Africa in Lusaka (2022), and at Mozilla Festival (2023). Esther was also part of the FEMRITE—Uganda Women Writers’ Residency (2018) and the Mawazo Novel Writing Workshop (2018) where she polished her debut fantasy manuscript. Esther also published a collection of short stories, “Bow to Enter Heaven”, under her pen name Hadassah Lous.
