Dito Tembe’s artistic career began with studies in animation at the Instituto Nacional de Cinema in Maputo, and piano at Casa da Cultura do Alto Mae in Mozambique. Like many of his peers, the so-called Madgermanes (literally ‘made in Germany’ in Tsonga and referring to Mozambican workers brought to the German Democratic Republic (GDR)), Tembe travelled to the GDR as a contract worker hoping for a better future. Between 1985 and 1989, he lived in Schwerin—a four-year period that had a strong impact upon his life. Alongside his work at the VEB Kombinat Lederwaren company that contracted him, Tembe kept his painting practice alive, depicting his everyday life experiences in the GDR, while still expressing nostalgia for scenes of the Maputo life he had left behind. The Madgermanes series employs storytelling as a mode of historical corrective. The works shown in the exhibition begin with pencil drawing on blank canvas—a nod to Tembe’s youth spent in the GDR. The black and white palette of the paintings also echoes the fact that black paint was the only choice available when the artist painted his very first mural in the dormitory he shared with his peers. During a conversation in preparation for this exhibition, the artist remarked: ‘I want to end this story so that I can own my life back’. Articulating his wish to leave an unresolved situation from the past and all of its contemporary implications behind, the artist aims to remember—in order, for example, to finally get justice for the thirty-three years of withheld wages which he and his peers have been demanding—as well as forget—so as to liberate himself from the ghostly nostalgia of the aforementioned better future that has remained elusive since he boarded the plane from Maputo to the GDR on 9 November 1985. Today, Tembe joins street demonstrations every Wednesday at Jardim dos Madgermanes in Maputo to advocate for much-awaited compensation and justice for former contract workers. Despite the fading trust in a long overdue reparation, his series depicts the life of his comrades in all its facets: joy, love, celebration, sorrow, resistance, resilience, and hope.

Commissioned by Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW), co-produced by Dito Tembe and HKW, 2023–24.

Works in the exhibition: Madgermanes (2023), series of 8 reproductions of original oil paintings on canvas, sizes vary between 345 × 281 cm and 345 × 467 cm. Courtesy of the artist