The colonial government of the early-twentieth-century British protectorate of Nyasaland (today’s Republic of Malawi) exerted control over the bodies of Black citizens in ways that were both brutal and mundane—Africans who did not remove their hats or shoes in the presence of a European, for example, were subject to punishment. The Reverend John Chilembwe took particular issue with such policing of clothing and gestures, and in 1915 he led an uprising against plantation owners. Samson Kambalu’s exhibition “New Liberia” smartly laid bare the absurdity—and the utter seriousness—of such rules and