George Kyeyune reflects on how the medium affects the message in contemporary Ugandan art.

“Nabulime makes casts of male and female genitals in transparent soap into which she embeds dark seeds to look like infections. We all know that soap is a cleaning agent. The metaphor presented here is that spiritual and physical cleanliness is crucial to the prevention of HIV infection.”

Dr. Lillian Nabulime.

Two months ago, Dr. Lillian Nabulime exhibited some very distinct recent sculptures. The show, which took place at the Makerere Art Gallery, upset all our expectations of figurative sculptures on pedestals and framed pictures hanging on walls. The installations were largely made from throw away materials that Dr. Nabulime had re-assessed and thereby given a new identity. In both approach and character, her pieces were very unlike the carved figures for which she is well known.

I have chosen to name her exhibition New Languages in Art, a phrase I am borrowing from Professor Roger Palmer, a British modernist artist who for six weeks in 1999 taught at the School of Industrial and Fine Arts (MTSIFA) under the auspices of The British Council.

Like our colleague, Dr. Palmer’s ideas of recuperating throw away materials proved exciting. For some reason, though, they were not taken further after his departure. Instead, the school continued on safer, familiar territory. It was only three years ago that I again saw something close to what Professor Palmer had instigated when Dr. Maria Kizito carried bits of charred wood and stinking garbage to the Makerere Gallery in a scathing castigation of the mayor of Kampala for not doing enough to clean up the city.

In the currently ongoing Independence Exhibition at Makerere Gallery, Muwonge Kyazze draws again on this tradition of recyclables with his piece Independence. It features the decapitated body of a pregnant mother in a coffin; next to her is a will, a bouquet of flowers, a piggy bank and floral decorations laid around the coffin. This provocative piece challenges our thinking about the whole essence of independence.

What is clear about all of these works was that they were not created out of a desire to make money. Rather the creations of these two MTSIFA dons were motivated by the urge to communicate boldly regarding social concerns; a more conventional approach to painting or sculpting figures would lack the needed potency to shock or to elicit thought about these issues.

It is this absence of pressure to sell and a propensity for visceral disclosure that I believe gave Dr. Nabulime the necessary composure to create her version of New Languages in Art when she was enrolled at New Castle University in the United Kingdom for her PhD in 2001. One should not assume that she was exposed to these concepts in art for the first time when she embarked on her PhD programme. Nabulime is, after all, a well-traveled artist who had visited galleries in Europe and participated in Triangle Art Workshops in several African countries.

(These workshops are specially designed flexible working spaces that aim to foster networking and the exchange of ideas by bringing together formally and informally trained artists from around the world to work in an environment of mutual respect.)

Soap Sculpture. By Dr. Lillian Nabulime.

What Nabulime’s PhD research did do, I believe, was give her the opportunity and composure to engage in a language that she was already familiar with. She knew that confining herself to carving wood would not give her work the broad access to the general public or the intellectual panache she was looking for. I argue that art made with recycled or throwaway materials has the scope to touch us and speak to us clearly because we instantly relate to the materials that are commonly used; they come from our environment, much as they are given a new identity.

In one of her installations, for example, Nabulime makes casts of male and female genitals in transparent soap into which she embeds dark seeds to look like infections. We all know that soap is a cleaning agent. The metaphor presented here is that spiritual and physical cleanliness is crucial to the prevention of HIV infection.

In another installation, she assembles three mirrors. The first one is massively shattered and as such distorts one’s image. This shattering is reduced in the second glass, while the third one is intact. The first glass relates to denial as a serious problem in the management of HIV/AIDS. The second glass represents post- counseling sessions in which people accept their affliction and learn to live positively with it, which improves their lives. In the third glass, patients live a normal life and carry on their day to day activities.

These and other sculptures in the show had earlier been used to stimulate discussions about the AIDS epidemic. Given that the great majority of infections in Uganda are via sex, and yet sex in the African context remains a largely taboo subject, Nabulime believed that she could, if obliquely, talk about this intricate subject via sculpture to her respondents, who were mostly women. (Women are more prone to HIV infection than men, biologically and because they have such low bargaining power when it comes to sex.)

Nabulime has said that indeed, her respondents recognized themselves in the work and she was able to engage them in useful discussions on the subject of HIV/AIDS.

Nabulime says she faced an uphill task creating works that would appeal to her market because the tradition of the so- called plastic arts in Uganda is very weak. Even when Margaret Trowel, the founder of the Makerere University Art School, added sculpture to her curriculum, the discipline did not develop at the same pace here as, for instance, painting. In my view, the reason for this is not so much the weak legacy of the plastic arts in East Africa but rather that sculpture itself is a slow-growing discipline.

For artists who are looking for a quick income, sculpture is simply not convenient. This is an important factor behind the paucity of sculpture in Uganda today. It also goes far in explaining why Nabulime had to be extremely creative to capture the imagination of her Ugandan audience.

Clockwise from top left: Receptacles, Mixed media. Receptacles, Detail. The Kiss, Mixed media. By Dr. Lillian Nabulime.

Still, most of this work was created to satisfy an academic programme and is not easily collectible in the Ugandan gallery setting. So can we expect Dr. Nabulime to maintain her iconoclastic working ethos? To survive creating work in this new direction, Dr. Nabulime will probably have to either seek funding from an outside source or revert to her former style in at least some of her work. It is noteworthy that Nabulime’s newest pieces in the show return us to her pre-PhD days. The realities of practicing art in Uganda could be catching up with her, at least for now.

It should be noted that the “new languages in art” that Dr. Nabulime has exposed to us with such effervescence are far more commonplace— and marketable—elsewhere in the world. In America and Europe, this approach started as far back as the early 20th Century. In 1917, Marcel Duchamp’s world famous Fountain, in which he simply named and signed a urinal, sparked controversy regarding what might or might not be called art. (This was one of the pieces that Duchamp called “ready mades” or “found art”.)

As the world shrinks further through improved communication, we cannot afford to remain an isolated Ugandan community in our artistic endeavors. Whether or not we want to become part of the international art circuit is no longer an option. But as we do so we must be conscious of where we come from as well as our location in history. Nabulime’s exhibition has challenged us to step out of our “comfort zone”, to quote Dr. Rose Kirumira, and with courage and determination, expand the horizons of our artistic experiences to new and international levels without losing our identity.

A Q&A with Pamela Kertland Wright, collector, writer and owner of Emin Pasha hotel as well as several other safari lodges in Uganda.

“I think there is incredible talent here in Uganda. But sometimes it needs to be taken out of Uganda to be fully appreciated. When people visit our house in the UK and see the art we have there, they are amazed. We have been buying pieces for people overseas, who seem to appreciate the work more than many people here.”

How did you begin collecting art? What do you love about it? Did you have a lot of money?

The first piece of art I ever bought was in a little gallery in London, over 20 years ago. It was a tiny fetching of a water garden and I was so proud of myself at the time. I had no money – it was totally impulsive. I was in my early twenties, working in London and feeling lonely and homesick for Canada. This little piece made me feel peaceful, and that was that. I probably would not buy it today—it’s kind of dull—but I still have it and love it because it was my first piece. In Uganda, it was my husband who bought me my first piece. He’s very good at that. He’s been buying art for me since we were first married.

How does a busy professional become a leading Ugandan art collector?

Am I a leading art collector? Much of our business is about aesthetics—so art is an integral part of what we do. I feel very lucky that I can sit down with artists, talk to them, learn about their process and this is all part of a day’s work.

Which artists do you own?

Personally, I own pieces by David Kigozi, Taga, Kizito, Jude Kateete, Paolo Akiiki, Maria Naita, Edison Mugalu, Geoffrey Lukasa, Ronex, Consodyne Buzabo, Paul Ssendagire, George Kyeyune…and I’ve just bought my first Daudi Karungi.

What are your plans for your collection? Do you intend to loan it out to museums, keep it in your house, sell it (if so, when and where?)

It has never occurred to me to loan to a museum. It also hasn’t really occurred to me to sell any of our pieces. I’ll have to think about that. I feel very attached to each and every piece.

Pamala's Living area with paintings by Taga, Mugalu.

Are you an artist yourself? If not, when and where did you acquire an interest and expertise in art?

No, I’m not an artist. I have no technical ability whatsoever… which is so frustrating because I am very visual and can conceive something in my mind that I’d like to see, but cannot produce it. I’m a writer, and I have a deep respect for artists who can bring something from conception to a finished product. I’ve worked with Paul Ssendagire on some woodblocks, and did some prototypes myself out of wax. They were terrible, but they were enough for him to work from, for him to understand my vision. I think I’m a bit jealous of artists and their ability and talent. I grew up with a family who appreciates art, and I married a man who is deeply interested in art (and very talented himself), so my interest was inevitable.

What do you look for when you buy a painting (or other work)?

For me it’s simple. It’s a gut reaction. I just bought another Mugalu – I had to have it as soon as I saw it. My father is an avid art collector, he has built a significant collection over the years, but doesn’t necessarily love all the pieces he buys, nor does he hesitate to sell his pieces. I haven’t reached that stage yet because I adore each and every piece we have.

What do you look for in an artist? Who is your favourite artist and why?

I am in a Mugalu phase at the moment, I love the way he handles light. I love the way that George Kyeyune handles the female form – I didn’t realize when we first bought his work that he was a sculptor. Now it makes sense! For me, part of the appeal is the artist themselves – I really like the person as well as the creation.

What is the most you’ve ever paid for a work of art?

Hmm. I think it would be fair to say maybe as high as two thousand dollars. But not more than that.

Lay people often say that they find art obscure and not particularly relevant to their lives. Do you think people should experience art? Why? Is art important to society?

For me, for us, art is so much a part of life. It is so much more than an adornment. There is a message in many pieces, and even if you aren’t necessarily interested in the message, the fact that the artist interpreted his feelings in that specific way is so relevant. It can be a means of communication, of expression, a recording of our times. Art can be such a dichotomy—sometimes the most prosaic things are the most striking. People must experience art because it opens them up to a way of feeling.

Kitchen area with paintings by David Kigozi, Pamela's home.

I seem to be in a flurry of collecting these past couple of years. I think maybe I’ve become greedy! I don’t currently have any of the young artists in my collection, but I am quietly watching RO, curious to see what he does next.

What kind of art moves you and why?

That is a difficult question to answer. We have the most sublime sculpture by Mary Naita; it is both strong and serene, I could look at it for hours. The fluid lines, the way she is able to make metal look soft and pliable, or wood look like polished bronze. Nobody can walk by it without reaching out to stroke it, and I love that tactile aspect of sculpture. I’m fascinated with the process that Ronex is developing in his metal casting. With paintings, especially oils, I am very attracted to how an artist works with light. I love the human form, and paintings that represent a slice of life. Real life, but beautifully rendered.

Assess the state of the arts in Uganda today. Is fine art thriving here? What should be done to bolster a “culture of art” in Africa?

I think there is incredible talent here in Uganda. But sometimes it needs to be taken out of Uganda to be fully appreciated. When people visit our house in the UK and see the art we have there, they are amazed. We have been buying pieces for people overseas, who seem to appreciate the work more than many people here. Everything is vibrant and alive and original. And fresh. It has been very interesting for me to see how Ugandan artists have honed their talent over the years, tweaking their styles, committing themselves to new directions. I’m amazed with their ability to adapt the materials they use if they’re lacking traditional “art supplies”. We need to develop a stronger appreciation of artists and their art, or as you say, a “culture of art”. It needs to be respected more, introduced earlier, and valued.

What do you think is the value of your entire art collection?

Oh my God, I have no idea. Emotionally, it’s priceless. If our house caught fire, we would let it burn while we dashed in and out to rescue the Naita, the Tagas, the Kigozis…

A cow. A boda boda. A woman carrying her child in a sling. A man pushing a wooden wheelbarrow. George Kyeyune sees extraordinary stories in ordinary events. ”If I can record these moments in time as permanent images. To engage my audience. To show you our history. To provoke you and challenge you about who you are. Then I have accomplished my mission as an artist”.

Editor Thomas Bjørnskau talks to George Kyeyune (born 1962) about his artistic and academic achievements.

George Kyeyune at his home studio, 2010.

Where normal commuters experience the Catch-22s of Kampala’s traffic queues as infectious events, the daily congestions are valuable input for Kyeyune’s production as a sculptor/painter. Sometimes he even chooses to leave work late, because it gives him a chance to experience the streets during the busiest moments.

Travelling between his home in Gayaza Road and his workplace at the Margrete Trowell School of Industrial and Fine Arts at Makerere, gives countless opportunities to store everyday images in his mental memory card.

And George Kyeyune’s life as an artist relies on this bodily flash drive, along with his ability to retrieve images from this storage when he is acting in front of a blank canvas or unmolded clay.

EDITOR: From the paintings I have seen, it looks like you have a very special gift for being able to  distinguish and single out that one outstanding motive from busy normal day. In addition, you have a talent for timing and composition, so you know exactly which posture to freeze. What is fuelling these gifts?

Kyeyune explains: ”I am fascinated by life in itself. Nothing is ordinary or trivial. My goal as an artist is to present a summary of life. Every moment is important. Life is extraordinary. That man pushing that wheelbarrow. It isn’t just about pushing. It’s about everything that has led that man to push that wheelbarrow. Whether there has been fairness on his way leading to that episode. My mission is to reveal everything around that man.

If my work can arouse your thinking about certain issues, that is where I want to go. Trying to be provocative, rather than narrative about subjects. I feel restless and doubtful, and you might discover these emotions in my work. So, I want you to feel doubtful too, because then the things around us become more interesting.”

The creative process

ED: How do you work?

”Often, sitting in front of that blank canvas, I have no clues. I don’t sketch. My initial question would be: ’What does it want?’ When I start applying colours, that puts me in the right mood. My memory starts working, and all these snapshots from the streets, the markets, the alleys and squares appear.

When I am painting, I am awake and alert. My technique may seem quite wild. I apply colour quite vividly, I am not labouring so much. I have an idea of what I want to say, not in a detailed way though. It is true that by the time I get to that canvas, I have been through a lot of reflections, collecting knowledge about life, storing images in my head. And I feel so restless about what I am thinking, that the canvas helps me to get it out.”

ED: It seems to me that there is a parallel buildup going on here; both inside you, the artist, and – since you mentioned your interest in everything that precedes the motives’ doings – around the subject you are depicting.

”Exactly. In the end, it is like an eruption of something. An explosion. I think it is a result of my reflections around the topics. An interest in the subject matter I portray. And because I have this keen interest in what I paint or sculpture, the best arrangement in form and colour will come out.”

George Kyeyune at his home studio, 2010.

His background

George Kyeyune was born in Masaka, Kyanamukaka subcountry in 1962. He was born into a traditional Ugandan familiy, with a double-digit number of siblings. He recalls strongly drawing pictures on the courtyard floor just after it had rained. George kept on using the ground as a canvas longer than the other kids of the same age. Because this excited him. This enthusiasm for drawings was one of the two reasons that led George to an artistic career. The other being two artist uncles serving as role models.

”I have kept some early work from my youth. One of them being a portait of my father. I think I am able to recognize a certain amount of talent in this first images,” Kyeyune smiles modestly.

He left Masaka in 1981 to become a student of Margaret Trowell School of Fine Arts. That started his lifelong commitment at the Makerere University. He graduated with a Bachelor of Art in 1985, which he supplemented with a Diploma in Education the following year, before heading off to the The Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda, India. After spending three years in the state of Gujurat, he returned home in the early 90’s with a Masters of Fine Arts, specialized in Sculpture.

Kyeyune considers his Indian stay as his transforming years:

”This experience was completely overwhelming. I was fascinated with India. Its ancient history. The progress during its Golden Age. The old religions that originated there. The tempels. The statues. The fact that it was colonised by the British, yet kept their religions. I asked myself : ’Why was that the case?’ India is deeply rooted in religions, completely different from how Uganda adapted Christianity.”

Also, for the first time in his life, he questioned his cultural inheritance:

”People expected me to come with a luggage, consisting of traditional African art, e.g. the mask and other symbols. But I didn’t have these roots. Ugandan culture isn’t rooted in masks. Our heritage is baskets and stools, myths and legends.

For the first time, I was made aware of the importance of my African culture. I tried to understand the logic of questioning me about why I didn’t make use of African art forms. In a way, I had to leave Africa to become aware of my cultural roots. And this opened many windows to understand my identity.”

George Kyeyune at his home studio, 2010.

Lecturing at Makerere

Returning from India, Kyeyune spent the first half of the 90’s teaching sculpture to students at Makerere. He also did sculptures for exhibition and worked as an illustrator. In 1996 he returned to painting. Something started to happen around painters in Kampala, a market was developing. Also, his work as an illustrator declined.

During these two decades, he has held different positions at the University; Head of Sculpture, Deputy Dean, and latest the Dean of Fine Arts, a position he has recently stepped down from. All the time, except three years spent in the UK to get a Ph.D. from 1999-2003, he has been lecturing sculpture.

”Being a lecturer allows me to constantly interact with other people; future artists and arts professionals. To discuss art and to get valuable feedback on my work.”

An obligation to humanity

ED: What do you want to tell your audience?

”You see, I am very emotional when I work. I record life around me, in an intriguing, sometimes humorous way. At the end of the day, I am only thinking about sharing my psyche. Sometimes I feel better. I have satisfied myself, been able to say something about the images I have memorized.

And that feels like an obligation to humanity. To use my skills and capacity to share these images. It’s like if I don’t share this to others, I have been mean. I am really dealing with two things. One: Make a good painting. Two: Tell the right story.

I want to tell you; these people are worth talking about. These motives – the subject matter – is as important than anything else you can think of. I use the brush and the paint, the mallet and the chisel to acknowledge and recognize ordinary people. And by doing this, enhance the audience’s feelings about themselves. What they think they are and want to do.”

George Kyeyune. (c) 2010. All rights reserved.

George Kyeyune recently had an exhibition at the Afriart Gallery, showing twentysomething of his latest paintings.

”Since I hadn’t produced in a while, I found it quite difficult to come up with enough paintings for the exhibition. I had to push myself to do it.”

ED: Where do you get you main ideas?

George grins: ”Ideas are everywhere around us. A lot of things don’t get noticed because people feel they’re ordinary. But they’re not ordinary.

They are extraordinary.”

Discuss Kyeyune’s work

Startjournal.org would love to hear the readers’ opinions on George Kyeyune’s life and artwork. What kind of role has he played as a teacher for younger artists? Does his artwork engage and provoke you the way he is describing? Which piece of his work do you appreciate the most?

Please comment and participate in the discussion!

Across Sub-Saharan Africa, contemporary art remains particularly influenced by the agglomeration of historical and political forces that have shaped the country in question.

In Europe art patronage has been dominated by the tastes and demands of bourgeois collectors for centuries: the art market. Given the relative fluidity of European culture and tastes since the 20^th century, and the transition of art into a marketplace of ideas and concepts, today’s British art is increasingly conceptual, and cannot be recognised as distinct from, say, the German equivalent in terms of form.  Expressions of cultural or national difference have been replaced instead by highly individualistic, polymorphous pieces that may ‘represent’ specific ideas pertaining to contemporary Western society.

In Black Africa this kind of art market and its vagaries has not developed to the same extent. Only in the past few decades has an urban middle class consumer emerged. But where sustained royal patronage did exist in Africa, patterns of artistic production have largely resisted recent economic developments.

Countries like Mali, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Côte D’Ivoire and Congo, held robust patronage networks based around strong, centralized traditional patterns of authority. Under such powerful systems of rule the arts could flourish.

The kingdom of Benin, for example, covering parts of contemporary Nigeria, Benin, Togo and Ghana, reached its imperial and artistic zenith in the 15^th century, producing the famous bronze wall plaques and life-sized bronze heads of their Obas of Benin (King). Even after the kingdom’s decline from the 16^th century, a deeply-rooted culture for anthropomorphic sculpture and design had been developed.  The Ga people of Ghana claim their descent from the kingdom of Benin and have continued to produce stunning face masks through the 19^th and 20^th centuries up to today.

The dearth of masks in Uganda

George Kyeyune

Neither Kenya nor Uganda’s precolonial ethnic groups had the unified, centralized organization or the sustained political and economic strength to develop such lasting art patronage networks.

“Uganda is not very well known for having a strong plastic [figurative] arts tradition” says George Kyeyune, Ugandan artist, scholar and teacher, and former Dean of Makerere University School of Fine Art.

“If you start with West Africa and Congo, we [Uganda] don’t have the masks, we don’t have the masquerades, we don’t have the bronze casts. We didn’t inherit that”.

Relatively few precolonial statuettes and masks have been discovered in Eastern Africa compared to those along the heavily forested southern belt of West and Central Africa. But this dearth of traditional production has allowed Uganda and Kenya more scope to create afresh, as literacy, urbanization and a growing consumerism brought new kinds of artist, art and collector to the scene.

An overview of the evolution of Ugandan art

Kyeyune, who holds a PhD on ‘Art in Uganda’ from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), gives me an overview of the evolution of Ugandan art since independence. He speaks quietly from his office-come-studio on Makerere campus, where he continues to write, paint and teach.

Makerere University

“In the 1960s, some felt we should dispense with the past and embrace the new, forge forward, whereas others felt ‘no, we’ve been cheated for such a long time out of our inheritance, we need to recover aspects of our past that are still relevant and important’. Others chose a middle ground, combining the past and the future…”

“From the 1970s onwards, when Idi Amin took power, a lot of things went to the dogs…” he reflects. “The subject matter changed. It became morbid. The colours used were very dark”. Art became a tool for protest.

“Artists criticised the leaders a lot. Not directly, as this was dangerous. They would use myths and legends to disguise their criticisms to the corrupt and inepts leaders. And they would also use the bible to speak about the injustices in their government.”

Kyeyune told me skeletons were commonly depicted in 1970s visual arts. The 1980s became a decade of “self-reflection”, where artists “showed disgust with their leaders”, emphasising Francis Nnaggenda’s work in particular. But by the 1990s, Yoweri Museveni’s party, the National Resistance Movement, had brought stability and a liberalised, growing economy.

Artists reacted positively to this freedom; they began experimenting in form and style, using new motifs, textures and colours. If a period can, the 1990s represented “some kind of avant garde for Ugandan art” says Kyeyune.

Some contemporary artists

Ronex Ahimbisibwe’s work conveys the diversity and complexity of Uganda’s new generation of artists. Short and wide-eyed, Ronex shows me around his house and studio near Makerere as dusk falls upon Kampala.

It’s a temple to creativity; inside, a photography studio, walls covered in paintings and rooms filled with home-made furniture. The actual studio is crammed with mixed media artistry: pixelated images, collages, barkcloth, rollers, powder and binder liquid, acryllic – these are the diverse media and textures he adopts to conjure his visual art. Around the grounds outside lie metal carcasses: sculptures or furniture half-produced.

Ronnie Tindi with one of his paintings

Artists like Ronnie Tindi also promote the new vibrancy in Ugandan art. Tindi hails from western Uganda, from the Banyankole (President Yoweri Museveni’s clan), but has lived in Kampala for years, now working at the Njovu Studio in Bukoto district. Tindi’s most striking paintings are strange, fantastical African faces, an indigenous take on pop art, with bright red lips and a brash originality that’s perhaps at odds with his gentle demeanour.

Donald Wasswa is another young artist whose work is abstract but milder on the eye. For the past few years he’s been painting or what he calls ‘masking’ magical, childish scenes of floating elephants among trees.  The originality of these pieces, sometimes using pen, coffee, magazines and acrylic, reflect his desire to move beyond an art scene that deals in the tourist or ex-pat trade, confined to commercial pictures of cockerels and African women in primary colours.

“Lots of artists today find shortcuts” says Kyeyune. “They use colours with rollers, iconic features – geckos, fish – in some cases it becomes a bit of a cliché. There is little attention to detail”.

A need for bright white spaces

Donald Wasswa in his studio

“Artists are starting to realise some of the problems that need to be rectified” says Wasswa. “Five years ago, many artists were mass-producing work that began to look very similar.” Wasswa says he realised you can’t produce work solely in view of where it could sell. Though he recognised you have to “evaluate a little”.

“It’s fine for a gallery to take your work but they need to promote it, which they are currently not doing” says Wasswa. Currently the city’s galleries will hardly inspire major collectors anyway; most are a few small rooms inside cramped bungalows with little if any lighting. Kampala urgently needs a large building with clean bright white spaces to honour its artists’ work.

“Some of us are thinking of developing a contemporary art gallery. We’ve looked at converting an old soap factory in Mbuya [a Kampala suburb]” he says. This was used in a one-off exhibition by the Goethe Institute some years ago and could be an interesting prospect.

We talked about the practical and touristic appeal of a Village des Arts (Dakar) equivalent in Kampala. Referring to tinga tinga, the Tanzanian art movement, Wasswa tells me he and some artists are looking to buy land down in Masaka district, west of Lake Victoria, to construct a series of large studios.

Bukoto, Kampala

Clearly underfunding and government mismanagement means most of Uganda’s artists struggle to start, let alone survive. Wasswa describes the 2007 Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Uganda, where artists were asked to submit their work which would be displayed around the city.

“Pieces were lost. Artists didn’t get rent fees. I lost a piece of work somewhere in Entebbe airport” he says. “Money does go to the Ministry of Culture but doesn’t trickle down to artists” Wasswa concludes.

A surviving potter

Bruno Sserunkuuma in his studio

Bruno Sserunkuuma could be seen as one of the old guard, who has survived working in Uganda. Originally a painter, Sserunkuuma became a potter who benefitted from his association as pupil and graduate fellow with Makerere University, a critical source of sustainable funding and resources as well as technical instruction.

Sserunkuuma’s artistry has clearly been influenced by the vision of the original founder of Makerere’s School of Fine Art, Margaret Trowell. Director of Makerere Art School from 1939-45, Trowell represented a colonial pedagogy. She wished to respect existing traditional methods while introducing technical knowledge as a pragmatic way to develop the visual arts in a region where representational art was rare. ‘We start from it, study it, and honour it’ was her dictum.

The ceramicist’s output is a product of this philosophy. He produces pots and vases that demonstrate both acute cultural sensitivity as well as clear technical mastery.  Women feature heavily in his tall, minutely-detailed vases and pots.

“I was very close to my mother and as a result the role of women, particularly in rural settings, is very prominent in my work”. These pieces earned him 2^nd prize in UNESCO’s Craft Prize for Africa in 2000. He has since exhibited globally.

Bruno is a kind of national ambassador for visual arts. His work is founded on good draftsmanship. When I asked George Kyeyune what was the fundamental strength of art in this country, he replied: “resilience”. “Lots of European artists have stopped painting images. Here we are still very traditional. We value drawing as a foundation for artists. To me that’s a strength.”

With further state and market investment as well publicity (a need identified by Kyeyune) an artist like Sserunkuuma could develop a genuinely global renown. Others would surely follow.

This year the joint faculty exhibition at Makerere University’s Fine Arts Department ”Different but One” celebrates its 15th year. Startjournal.org would like to honour 15 of the inspiring faculty artists by displaying 15 artworks from the current exhibition. Please enjoy and comment their work.

Written by Thomas Bjørnskau, Editor of startjournal.org

According to curator Rebeka Uziel, the idea to establish ”Different but One” was quick and spontaneous, but the implementation was complicated and quite challenging. Since the first exhibition fifteen years ago, the Makerere Art Gallery has kept on the tradition of combining the art of all faculty members around a common theme.

Uziel explains in the notes handed out at the anniversary exhibition that ”Different but One” has developed and improved over the years. The variety of the themes has been constantly widening, the variety of artistic professions has been increasing, and everyone is contributing with their very best works.

This year’s theme was simply ”Different but One 15”, where each artist has been asked to create works that convey feelings vis-à-vis the success of the exhibition to reach its 15th year.

Startjournal.org would like to use this opportunity to select and display 15 artworks from 15 faculty members. We know that these artists has taught, encouraged and inspired so many of the contemporary artists in Uganda.

These fifteen artworks and others can still be displayed in the gallery at the Makerere campus, but we hope this article will spread the works to a wider audience. We also sincerly hope our readers will comment the artworks at the bottom of this article.

1. Godfrey Banadda

Godfrey Banadda is one of the most respected names in contemporary African art. His work is unique, incorporating amazing characters and stories from culture and mythology into complex masterpieces.

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2. Dr Lilian Nabulime

Dr Lilian Nabulime is a Ugandan sculptor, who creates bold, beautiful and challenging work that explores the politics of gender, race and disease in modern Africa. In the current edition of Startjournal.org, you can learn from Nabulime how to carve relief in wooden 2D-sculptures.

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3. Dr Kizito Maria Kasule

Dr Kizito Marie Kasule is a senior lecturer and currently the Head of the Fine Arts Department at the School of Fine and Industrial Arts, Makerere University. In 2008 he opened the Nagenda International Academy of Art and Design a self-sustaining school for teenagers and young adults.

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4. Dr Rose Kirumira Namubiru

Dr Rose Kirumira Namubira is one of the few Ugandan contemporary female artists specializing in the sculpture of the human form in wood normally with other media, clay and concrete. She is currently the Deputy Dean of MTSIFA. In the current edition of Startjournal.org, you can read this interview with Kirumira.

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5. Dr George Kyeyune

Dr George Kyeyune is an associate professor at Makerere University art school and definitely Uganda’s leading expressionist, who has helped many local artists and viewers find themselves in his simple narratives about urban life in Kampala. Kyeyune was interviewed for Startjournal.org in Issue 005.

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6. Annette Sebba

Annette Sebba is a photographer and lecturer for photography at the School of Industrial and Fine Arts. She has applied herself to study experiments with different photographic techniques and materials.

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7. Dick Amanya

Amanya is a painter and a teacher for painting and weaving at MTSIFA.

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8. Amanda Tumusiime

Amanda Tumusiime is a person who is definitely in tune with her community, some of her roles have been an interior decorator, lecturer, General Secretary for Uganda Artists Association, Director for AFORD (Art for Development) in Uganda, and Secretary-Uganda National Artists. Her abstract art pieces, which are resplendently beautiful, explore themes relating to women’s changing status.

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9. Francis Xavier Ifee

Francis Xavier Ifee is a senior lecturer for painting and illustration at MTSIFA. He has exhibited his very detailed and colorful paintings in oil or water color in several art exhibitions national and international.

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10. Esther Kavuma Ndagire

Esther Kavuma Ndagire is currently a Lecturer at Makerere University. As a Painter and Textile Designer, she draws her inspiration from Urban Kampala and Uganda’s rich cultural heritage. Her main subjects are women. Her works especially paintings usually portray challenges women face every day, some of which are personal experiences.

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11. Donald Nantagya

Nantagya is a painter and a lecturer for weaving at the Art School.

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12. Bruno Sserunkuuma and Edward Balaba

Bruno Sserunkuuma’s art is deeply rooted in his social and cultural traditions. He employs simple basic shapes derived from traditional pottery on which he applies strong and rich coloured motifs and figures. The themes for his decorations reveal the cultural and social life of Uganda’s traditional communities, especially the Baganda. To these he adds an intellectual artistic appeal that has captured international attention and acclaim. Edward Balaba is a lecturer in the ceramics department.

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13. Kizito Fred Kakinda

Kizito Fred Kakinda is a professor of Art at Makerere University in Kampala. His work his appeared in numerous shows in Uganda as well as in Europe. His inspiration comes from the ancient cave painters and Egyptian artists who used the human figure and surrounding forms as symbols of spiritual, cultural expression and identity.

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14. Dr Angelo Kakande

Dr Angelo Kakande has researched extensively on contemporary Ugandan art and the connection to politics. He is currently the Head of the Department of Design at MTSIFA.

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15. Dr Venny Nakazibwe

Venny Nakazibwe is a designer and art historian, currently a lecturer and Dean of the Margaret Trowell School of Industrial and Fine Arts, Makerere University in Uganda. She holds a Masters degree in Textile Design and a PhD in African Art History. Nakazibwe is one of the female artists being interviewed for this article in issue 007 of Startjournal.org.

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Margaret Nagawa has had many roles and responsibilities participating in Uganda’s fine art world. She has been a student of fine art, a maker of fine arts, a curator, a teacher, a promoter, and a collector of fine arts. And now again, a student of fine arts!

Margaret currently lives in Ethiopia but is working on her PhD from Makerere, writing her dissertation on ‘Visual Arts Dissemination and Cultural Translation in East Africa’.

Margarat Nagawa is interviewed by Abigail Bartels for startjournal.org.

For the sake of this interview, I wanted to hear her thoughts on her personal journey as an artist and her perspective on being a professional within Uganda’s art community.

The personal journey

When did you first know that you loved expressing yourself through visual arts?

I have an early memory of my big sister, Grace Nassali, my younger brother, Paul Ssegawa, and myself melting crayons on a window sill of our home in Gulu in the mid 1970s. It was magical seeing those trails of colour dripping on the white wall. That image has stayed with me always and perhaps it is a pointer to my interest in art, even though in and of itself, it was not a direct image or object making session.

Who was most influential to you in your formative years in regards to artistic expression?

As children our parents encouraged self-expression. We were surrounded by books when growing up. When finances were limited in the 1980s after the Amin war, we were encouraged to read aloud articles in newspapers. We made extra pocket money by creating dance performances in our living room as well as simple artworks.

I pleased myself by making my own doll clothes and my sister built houses and cities for our make believe worlds. My brother made many objects to use around our miniature cities. Giving us the freedom to play with mud, needles, tins, newsprint, fabric off-cuts and allowing us to be spontaneous and questioning  – was a great gift from our parents, the late Emmanuel William Ssali and Mrs. Salome Namuleme Ssali.

Can you name three of your favorite Ugandan artists and why you love their work?

Oh! This is a hard one. I have so many favorites for varying reasons! Could I go beyond this limit of individuals and look at this through qualities I admire?

I admire the skill, the time, the research and the discipline Taga Nuwagaba invests in his paintings. In exploring the social structure of Ugandans through the totems he is creating awareness, contributing to nature preservation while making art accessible to ordinary people. (In this same issue of startjournal.org, you can learn about Taga’s artwork and how he approaches the making of art).

For tenacity, Francis Xavier Nnaggenda, Joseph Ntensibe, Paulo Akiiki, Gen. Elly Tumwine and Nuwa Wamala Nnyanzi are exemplary. They have explored their media of choice be it wood, metal or paint over a long period of time while keeping the ideas in their work up to date and relevant to the times.

Daudi Karungi on the other hand who has braved many venue changes, has grown from representing mainly fellow young artists to broadening online into Start magazine as well as working with established artists like George Kyeyune through his gallery AfriArt in Kamwokya. This extension of discussions from the physical into the digital is a great leap in Uganda’s art exposure.

In Uganda today there is a movement towards forming artists’ groups. This form of collaborations is admirable, as it shows that artists are not waiting “to be discovered”, but are finding solutions to their common problems like studio and exhibition space, relevance of their art to society and cross border collaborations. Notable examples are Njovu Arts, Kann artists, The Art and Design Consortium Consultants that designed Uganda’s new currency, Weaverbird art camps, In-Movement – art for social change working with disadvantaged children in Kangansa area, and Let Art Talk, who work with communities in Gulu and Masaka.

For versatility and experimentation, we have artists filled with energy, bursting with ideas and enthusiasm. Kizito Maria Kasule, who is a painter and installation artist as well as running an art school in Namulanda, Entebbe road, is exemplary. The ideas in his work often presented social ills and celebrations in a new light.

Samson Ssenkaaba (Xenson) with his performance work that blends poetry, video, fashion, hip-hop and painting always has something new to offer. Photographer Erik Rwakooma and Ronex Ahimbisibwe who share a home studio, are very versatile, blending photography, painting, and welding which result in provocative artworks.

Sarah Nakisanze, Sanaa Gateja and Maria Naita are admirable for their attention to the needs of others through skills transfer in their artistic practice. They all operate workshop-type studios where they teach and employ people, especially women.

Sanaa has trained women over the years in making paper beads since the late 1980s based in Kaseese, long before beads were a fashionable product in Kampala. He has a group of women who have their own cooperative society, who work at his studio in Lubowa. He is currently exhibiting in The Global Africa Project at the Museum of Arts and Design in New York. (Sanaa Gateja has been interviewed for startjournal.org, read about his story here.)

In the process of making art, can you identify what makes you feel that a piece is successful?

At the core, my pieces are an internal, personal conversation. But my pieces do also become a conversation with viewers as well.

I made a painting in my eclectic approach on bark cloth mounted on canvas with a collage of a cityscape. It was large, dramatic and bold, but it wasn’t really saying what I wanted it to say – Kampala steeped in rich red soil and covered in a thin layer of dust.

My friend Tania Lazeb saw in it a floating ferry … and it has become a running joke that we refer to as ‘the floating city’.

If you had no financial consideration in the world, what type of art-making experience would you love to have?

Wow! The thing dreams are made of! It would be exciting to blend the media of film, architecture and fine arts. The scale, technology, spatial, collaborative as well as the time-based features of film and architecture would be an enriching factor to add to art practice.

Hmm! This dream may come true someday…

The professional career

What elements of your education and career have been motivated by a practical need to “provide” for yourself and your family?

Growing up in Uganda, the emphasis from parents and teachers is often on training for a profession so that one can be able to provide for themselves as an independent member of society. I am no exception to this. However, when choosing what to study at university level, all I wanted was fine arts.

My father was very encouraging even though there was no artist role-model that I knew to emulate. Anywhere we went with any form of art – churches, restaurants, hotels, books – we would get into a discussion about it. As a child, I was always collecting objects, drawing, painting, making little sculptures from anthill soil, generally experimenting as kids do. I guess my path in the arts was carved early on before I even knew how to spell ‘career’.

While on one level many artists would love to just have funding or make enough from their work to be independent of other roles, I often feel the different roles may also add insight and perspective to the artist’s work.  Have you found that some of your other roles in the arts actually informed your pieces or gave you ideas for art works? Can you share a specific example?

I enjoy wearing a multitude of artistic hats. As an artist, the freedom to be and do what you want is wonderful. But we also sometimes need to educate people about what we do or respond to what people want.

When I saw a disconnect between artists and their potential audiences, I took a curatorial MA program at Goldsmiths in London so I could better understand and perhaps bridge this gap. Operating as an independent curator gives me the freedom to design my own interventions while still making art.

I ran a Saturday Children’s art class at our home in Makindye with sculptor Henry Segah. This arose out of a need to see my kids exposed to more three dimension art making as well as exposure to indigenous art forms like the rich pottery tradition. We had children in the neighbourhood attend these classes and it was so successful. My work at this time featured a lot of cut and paste techniques as well as a bold application of colour and collaboration with the children on artworks.

One specific example is Our Garden, 2007, acrylics on canvas (collection Tania and Mick Farmer). Children like to work on large formats. I primed a large canvas, put it on the floor in my studio, and let the kids go wild with colour. We had a cassava-resist on cotton collage in the centre of the canvas from which the rest of the composition emanated. It’s bright, it is alive – the energy and enthusiasm of the children pulsate on that canvas.

Teaching at the art school in Makerere University was challenging and exciting too. The big student numbers leave a lecturer unsatisfied because you cannot give the attention they need. However, exposing the students to the art scene in Kampala as well as discussing art works and having artists in Kampala give presentations to them was very eye-opening.

Students are confident yet timid at times.  They want so much to be big, to leave a positive mark on society. In discussion on artists’ careers with professionals like Taga Nuwagaba, we explore all these aspirations. As a teacher you feed this into the teaching. Conversations with my former students like Mustapha Semugenze who has created creative minds, a Facebook discussion forum, continue through social networks online.

Based on your various opportunities as student and teacher, do you feel the education system in Uganda is developing positively towards more freedom of expression? If yes or no, what do you think are some of the contributing factors?

The education system is straining at the seams. It is bulging with large student numbers yet the teachers are limited. Artistic expression is very much valued in the 3 – 6 year olds. But when primary school starts, most schools focus more on literacy and numeracy than creativity. This is a sad phenomenon.

A society that devalues and stifles creativity among the young ends up creating robotic citizens. Alongside the sciences, which are the favored subjects today, art, music, literature, drama, architecture, dance need to be encouraged as they add to the vitality and further progress of humankind. An exertion of intelligence and humility to create a fusion of creativity, spirituality, old traditions and new technologies would mitigate the political, economic and moral violence in our society today.

However, there are a few gems like teacher Milli Muhima in Ambrosoli International School, ceramic artist and secondary school teacher Tonny Kawooya, and Dr. Rose Kirumira at Makerere University for whom creativity is a fundamental part of teaching and learning any subject. (Rose Kirumira was interviewed in Startjournal.org Issue 007). Students trained by such exemplary individuals are our hope for the future.

But for a wider freedom of expression, there need to be educational policies focusing on the respect for creative input and artistic traditions in the form of iconic individuals, images and objects from local and international history spanning the periods of pre-colonial, colonial, independence and the present nation state in the wider frame of a globalized world.

A current day example is Sarah Nakisanze who uses barkcloth, an indigenous fabric in the great Lakes region and experiments with organic and industrial dyes. To create a broader impact, these artistic explorations need to be incorporated into school curricula for both intellectual and experiential enrichment.

What “practical” or “professional” role (besides making art), have you enjoyed most and why?

The capacity to be able to move from one role to another or embody multiple roles at once is exciting. There are phases where I feel that a part of my work is neglected and that knocks me out of balance. Moving to Ethiopia was very exciting at the start, but soon felt empty and I was searching inward for a new identity.

I now have a studio to work, I am exploring local materials like the thin hand-woven cotton and soft sheepskin leather and I am a student researching and writing on art,  which is an extension of my curatorial interests. The direct contact with students in an art school setting is missing at the moment but it will resurface in the future. The Kampala Art Studio tour will resume in July when I am there, otherwise it will soon resurface as an online forum. Each of my roles feeds another and I am happy with the fluidity of it.

In much of your education you’ve pursued an interest in the bigger art picture  (curating, marketing, art-promotion, art-education).  How are you hoping to use your experience as an artist and a member of the art community to promote the arts in Uganda and beyond?

Understanding the production and consumption of the arts is crucial to getting beyond the art objects themselves. I start many artistic activities in form of conversations. Dialogue with artists, architects, galleries, audiences, educational institutions, students and with myself are pivotal to creating artworks, exhibitions, art tours, course outlines and essays.

As an active member of the Uganda art community I hope to stimulate interest in making and consuming art and perhaps a systematic use of art objects and ideas in education. My husband and I collect art and books on a small scale, which to us are significant testaments of the times and places we live. These are important creative outputs that in the future we hope to publish and disseminate in varied ways for broader viewership.

Part of my keen interest in doctoral studies is to dialogue with other artists, curators and arts organizers in varied forms, in order to enable more exhibitions, publishing, inter-institutional collaborations, and overt artistic activities to enable these varied facets of the art community to make themselves heard. I do what I do because I believe in it, I am passionate about it and I am willing to learn more.

Abigail Bartels is a freelance writer living in Kampala.

In Uganda we are not short on visual culture. We are surrounded by visual impressions of all kinds – adverts in different sizes and forms, persuading us to buy products we may never even use in our lives. From large and neatly designed billboards announcing the arrival of a superior industrial product  to simple and often crude road side signs publicizing a hair salon, merchants of all sorts of products compete for the financially hard-up Ugandan buyer.

Review by Dr. George Kyeyune

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Background

I noted recently that product advertisers are gradually regaining their spaces after the January 2011 presidential and parliamentary elections when, most if not all the urban and rural environments were awash with campaign posters.

Alongside the production and display of this commonly referred to as applied art, is the fine art. Fine art is unfortunately most times confined to galleries and private spaces. Although admission to galleries of fine art has always been free, they are very rarely visited by an average Ugandan.

The modern practice of galleries

The tradition of exhibiting art in gazetted spaces with formal openings is a modern practice. Modernity has changed the way we practice, display and consume art. The founding of modern Art Schools in Africa, (including the Makerere School of Industrial and Fine Arts) at the beginning of the 20^th century, also brought along certain behaviors and standards in disseminating art which by virtue of their opulence and snobbishness have tended to exclude the lower sections of society.

Yet Art Colleges in Uganda have always emphasized attention to local communities in their teaching and research.

From galleries to communities

In the recent past, the Uganda-German Cultural Society (UGCS) has made efforts to take art out of the white intimidating walls of the galleries to the communities  For example in mid this year, Mackinnon road, behind Fair Way Hotel in Nakasero, was cordoned off and artists displayed a diversity of art forms. This one day exhibition code named LaBa! was important in the following ways:

First, it de-emphasized and promoted an interaction between art and craft when all artists  are exhibited together. Second, it brought in its fold other forms of art like dance and theatre. And third, it encouraged the exchange of ideas and information among the exhibiting artists and among the artists and their audience.

The high level of attendance was a milestone in UGCS’s aim at improving the visibility and value of artists among their local audience as well as renewing the relevant aspects of traditional approach to art dissemination.

The role of Sadolin Company

Sadolin Company is also aware that Kampala environment lacks art with a broader view of the world and a critical angle to our life experiences, currently a privilege of the art gallery visitors. Taking a different and rather more comprehensive approach than the LaBa! Project, Sadolin chose to make art accessible to a wider audience by sponsoring the creation of art in the streets of Kampala painted on Mabaati.

Mabaati is plural for Baati, a vernacular word for corrugated iron roofing sheets. With the growing construction industry in Uganda, there are many spaces in town fenced off with Mabaati to ensure safety and privacy of the construction sites. Sadolin noted and agreed that the exterior of Mabaati fencing were perfect spaces to accommodate the proposed eight by four feet paintings.

To generate the needed creative mood and visual debates and to give the project an artistic panache and excitement, Sadolin coined a catch word Mabarti, by manipulating Mabaati. This helped to a) retain the vernacular tone of iron roofing sheets while at the same time introducing a semblance of art which is at the core of this project and b) engaging with the local audience in a friendly and intimate way using a local and therefore more accessible language was ensured.

Color your world

Working in conjunction with the Uganda-German Cultural Society, Sadolin identified 30 artists for the Mabarti project who turned up on a Tuesday for a briefing. The manager of Goethe Zentrum Kampala Mr. Sebastian Woitsch explained that Sadolin is a company that produces color for the Ugandan market and beyond.  Sadolin wanted to give back to the community, he continued, by partnering with artists who in any case have traditionally used the products Sadolin manufactures.

Artists have the capacity, to enhance and extend the visual experience of Kampala city.  The theme of the project was Color Your World which was open enough to accommodate a diversity of thoughts, approaches and styles.

The winning painting by Xenson. (c) 2011. Photograph by Ragna Spargel, used with permission from Goethe Zentrum Kampala.

Artists indulged their passion with unprecedented abandon.  They were competing for the first three positions. Ssenkaaba Samson (Xenson) took the first position which attracted a cash prize of Ugs 500,000 as well as a chance to hold a fully sponsored art exhibition in September 2011 in a prestigious space, to be agreed on.  The first runner-up, Damba Ismael, and second runners-up Edison Mugalu and Paul Kintu, who on this occasion tied, each received a cash prize of Ugs 250,000.

In the adjudication exercise, the adjudicators were looking for an open and honest interpretation of the theme Color Your World, evidence of commitment to the task, freedom exhibited in the execution of the piece as well as sense of freshness in terms of ideas and physical object expressed. I must add that it was extremely hard to spot a winner as there were very many deserving paintings.

The winning paintings

In his characteristic style of tightly knitted compositions with schematized figural motifs, Xenson looked at a typical social life in Kampala squalors where women who dominate the composition are depicted as bearers of social burdens.

(c) Xenson, 2011.

Damba Ismael on the other hand observed nature and painted a richly decorated butterfly. This composition echoes the dazzling colors and energy of the bustling Kampala and its suburbs, while at the same time sounds trumpets of warns about protecting the fragile ecosystem around us.

(c) Damba Ismael, 2011.

Mugalu’s approach was lucid and non-committed with restless figures in motion arranged equidistant from each other. The painter seems to have spared his brushes in favor his hands to develop this intriguing painting. (Edison Mugalu has been interviewed in startjournal.org).

(c) Edison Mugalu, 2011.

Paul Kintu also drew on his childhood memories and made of gesturing stick figures. These are flanked by floral and architectural motifs on either side.

(c) Paul Kintu, 2011.

Other participating paintings

Daudi Karungi experimented with color in a non-figurative approach. The geometric shapes make reference to the anonymous high rise buildings of Kampala which in the recent past have taken over Nakasero hill.

(c) Daudi Karungi, 2011.

David Kigozi is angry with the level of theft and corruption that have infested Ugandans to the core. In his painting, a multitude of footsteps crisscross moving somewhere but going nowhere. One notes a sense of chaos, confusion, yet there is potential for sanity. The large figure in Kigozi’s painting, is burdened by a heavy debris – carrying it high over its head as if poised to stone the transgressors.

(c) David Kigozi, 2011.

Paul Ndema returns us to the 70s and early 80s with a vividly morbid subject. A large human skull is distinctively painted in white in the centre, outlined by bold black paint. The skull is hemmed in by the familiar V shaped patterns on either edge of the ‘canvas’. Paul’s frustration and anger (wherever it is coming from) can be compared to that of David Kigozi.

(c) Paul Ndema, 2011.

Childhood memories

Edopu Rita’s figures are highly schematized. Her stick like figures are a reminiscent of kindergarten art. With this approach, the painting retains a sense of innocence and simplicity. Perhaps Edopu’s thoughts about Kampala are about people who are impressionable and gullible.

(c) Edopu Rita, 2011.

Farid Mahfudh has grouped together common sights of Kampala. Birds, women, butterflies and cows [and goats] freely roam the city.

(c) Farid Mahfudh, 2011.

Color application

Abusharia painting says so much with so little. Richly colored and busy attenuated rectangular shapes are placed within a vast space of saturated red as if making reference to the contrast between well planned spacious spaces and the congested squalors of Kampala.

(c) Abusharia, 2011.

Anwar’s style is related to that of Abusharia particularly in terms of color application and treatment of the surface. There is in some cases recognizable figural motifs – animals, trees, birds and human figures populating Anwar’s paintings.

(c) Anwar Sadat Nakibinge, 2011.

Christopher  Bigomba has created a cityscape in orange and red tones as if in the process of melting down. Christopher is probably making reference to the strained living conditions.

In a related rendering, Amos Ssentongo painted colors dribbling down the ridges of mabaati as if to emphasize their verticality. Their apparent static positioning is eased by the varying heights of the colored ridges.

(c) Amos Ssentengo, 2011.

Kampala cityscape

Collin Ssekajugo is lamenting about something that he does not go ahead to elaborate His painting of the city’s skyline bears a text in bold letters Imagine Kampala.

(c) Collin Sekajugo, 2011.

Perhaps his restlessness is explained by Ismael Kateregga who presented a pictorial view of Kampala’s skyline with the omnipresent and erratic minibus commuters in dust and muddy downtown.

(c) Ismael Kateregga, 2011.

Geoffrey Muhumuza’s painting is simple and basic dominated by colorful curves and ovals. Sali Yusuf too makes a delightful grouping of colors with simplified geometric inspired by the Kampala cityscape.

(c) Yusuf Ssali, 2011.

Graphical figures

Juuko Hoods has used fish and sun flower to bring across an important message of love and tranquility. The motifs are used embrace each other in an intimate and passionate manner.

(c) Jjuuko Hoods, 2011.

Yet another warm and positive painting is that of Tindi, whose portrait of a richly decorated  ‘African’ woman in profile celebrates the state of womanhood.

(c) Ronnie Tindi, 2011.

Kaspa’s trees are clearly showing marks of old age. They are set within a landscape where perspective is emphasized. Kaspa’s trees point to the need for preservation and restoration that Kampala badly needs.

(c) Kaspa, 2011.

Mathias Tumusiime is well known for his child like figures which ignore perspective and anatomy. Their gazing frontal faces are attached for feet set in profile. While Mathias’ paintings are naïve they retain a sense of glamour and spontaneous raw energy which is commonly visible in Down Town Kampala where manual work is a common sight.

(c) Mathias Tumusiime, 2011.

Ro made explicit graphical figures of nude women which he accompanied with protesting text, LET’S ALL REJECT PONOGRPHY. Ironically, the figures themselves may not be necessarily hard pornography, but to the puritan, they are offensive.

(c) Ronald Kerango, 2011.

Sadolin’s colors

Geoffrey Muhumuza chose to be simple with his bold and distinct multicolored shapes dominated by ovals and curves.  Like Muhumuza, Sister Elisabeth is interested in color and its psychological-emotional impact. Her painting is dominated by ovals and circles. Her design  has a lot in common with the Sadolin Color Your World signage.

(c) Sister Elisabeth, 2011.

The need to recognize Sadolin was also Wasswa’s concern. Wasswa clearly responded to the promoter’s support and benevolence. In bold letters WASSWA vs SADOLIN the artist made his presence felt. Sadolin has provided Wasswa a voice to be heard and as such Sadolin’s might must be extolled for the public to know. (Startjournal.org reviewed Donald Wasswa’s last exhibition).

(c) Donald Wasswa, 2011.

Return to antiquity

With his rustic figures Henry Mzili takes us back into antiquity. He yearns for a return to the pristine nature of things. As he expresses the essence of life, he makes a visceral representation of his experience not only as an artist with a deep critical resource but also a conventional member of the Kampala urban and suburban culture. (Henry Mzili is one of the founders of Start Journal. He regularly writes his Free Expressions.)

(c) Henry Mzili, 2011.

Ronex created a rather misty painting with no clear path and destination. The dominant white overwhelm the dimly painted spaces evenly distributed across the spread as if to say that Kampala is enveloped in a mist of uncertainty. (Ronex was recently portrayed in Startjournal.org, read this interview here.)

(c) Ronex, 2011.

Rosario Achola is drawing on the ancient Egyptian imagery. Her work is intensely spiritual and mythical. The multiple hands on the central standing figure in blue recall Gaytri, a Hindu Goddess.

(c) Rosario Achola, 2011.

Multi-dimensional figures

In a related rendering, Sane’s white and yellow multi-dimensional gazing figure allude to melancholy and bewilderment. But also, in it, one reads life as a vital element which must be respected. (Sane regularly writes for Startjournal.org, read his latest article here.)

(c) Sane, 2011.

Sheila’s tone did not differ very much. She talked about the ‘street queens’ as the text accompanying the ‘tribal’ figures reads. Sheila is touched by the pathetic conditions of children begging on the street. They form an important part of Kampala’s social mosaic- Kampala would be incomplete without them.

(c) Sheila Nakitende, 2011.

Not far apart is Zuena Nabukenya who has reconstructed a classroom situation.  The waving hands in foreground and responding to female figure who might be a teacher- poorly fed and resourced. Today they are agitating for more pay. The table which she is using as a support to scribble things is incongruously positioned, as if waiting to drop on her feet. Zuena’s world is random and unplanned.

(c) Zuena Nabukenya, 2011.

Challenges and opportunities

Given that the participating artists were regular exhibitors in the Kampala art galleries, majority of whom being graduates of art education institutions in Uganda, they share similar ideals and fears  in their art careers. Their motivation to make art in their everyday practice is not altogether detached from the taste and desires of the intended audience who are by and large the expatriate community.

The monotony of this market-oriented art indeed precipitated the mounting of Controversial Art. So uneasy was the Ambassador of the Netherlands in Uganda, who founded Controversial Art, that that he invited artists to step out of their comfort zones to create something unsettling and intellectually engaging. Now in its second year, Controversial Art permit artists to loosen up and make critical remarks on the prevailing social/political issues using any conceivable material within the artists’ surroundings.

The Kampala public who have scarcely visited art galleries, have been treated to Mabarti art which is a) allegedly pitched to the Western audience and, b) is intended to stir intellectual debate and imagination. They are invited to respond to ‘Uganda’s modern art’, which they have not been prepared to embrace.

Yet, if artists have been seeking for recognition and respect, it is the Mabarti or such projects that will liberate them and link them to their local audience through constructive feedbacks.

Causing public uproar?

There is more. Given that Mabarti project operated within a broad and unfenced thematic terrain, it left much room for artists to create unregulated compositions. Some artists such as Ro presented paintings of nude women.

Nudity is not accepted and allowed in the Ugandan society. The annual nude exhibition which run from 1999 to 2001 in the Nommo Gallery was stopped because women who were most frequently depicted felt demeaned and disrespected. Several women organizations and champions of women emancipation condemned the nude exhibitions.

Other artists like David Kigozi made overt political statements expressing disgust for their corrupt political and religious leader. Fortunately in our adjudication work, we did not come across paintings that could be characterized as sensational as to cause public uproar.

Sadolin’s part in directing the project

It also noteworthy that for some artists, Sadolin played a role in directing their thoughts and ideas. Sadolin is a commercial enterprise with a philanthropic spirit and it is reasonable to argue that it approached the Mabarti project from that perspective.

The promise of rewarding the winning artists was naturally an important consideration in the conceptualization and execution of the paintings. It may not have been discernible in the winning pieces, but for some artists like Wasswa, the temptation of pleasing Sadolin was so obvious. He overtly and unashamedly made Sadolin an intricate and integral part of his painting.

Conclusion

Keeping art to the privileged few has outlived its time and is no longer sustainable. In Uganda’s liberal economy, disciplines that do not demonstrate apparent benefits to the masses run the risk of becoming extinct.

The project of taking art to the street that Sadolin is spearheading will give artists and their ‘new audience’ the opportunity to dialogue. The artists will cast their nets beyond the gallery visitors to include local audiences. They will understand each other better and gradually develop images that match their expectations.

Mabarti art project has confirmed to the Kampala dwellers and visitors that there is a community of artists in Uganda actively and devotedly practicing art and that these artists would like to reach out to them.

Dr George Kyeyune is an associate professor at Makerere University art school and definitely Uganda’s leading expressionist, who has helped many local artists and viewers find themselves in his simple narratives about urban life in Kampala. (The visual artist George Kyeyune was interviewed in startjournal.org’s Issue 005.)

All photographs (except stated) by Roshan Karmali, used with permission from Goethe Zentrum Kampala.

In this essay I review the themes of woman and man as visualised in Lilian Nabulime’s ‘Sculptural figures reflected on daily experiences’. I show how a creative enterprise, shaped by formal art education, is interwoven into specific historical circumstances. I submit that through her sculptures Nabulime attempts to challenge masculine power.

However, she invents a visual regime in which the very masculinity and femininity she challenges are reasserted and confirmed, albeit differently. I thus argue that by failing to decisively dismantle the essences of masculinity and femininity which are inscribed in the country’s discourse of power, the exhibition testifies to the difficulties Ugandan female artists face as they challenge the available canon of visual representation.

Reviewed by Angelo KAKANDE F.J.

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Introduction

Children, wood, metal, nails, 22x12x1 inches. (c) Lilian Nabulime 2011.

The word ‘reflected’ is central to the title of this exhibition. It establishes a relationship between our ‘daily experiences’ and the artist’s ‘sculptural figures’. To ‘reflect’ is defined in Collins English Dictionary (2005) as to ‘form an image of’. Dictionary.com defines the verb to reflect as ‘to think, ponder, or meditate: to reflect on one’s virtues and faults’.^[1]

The curator Katrin Peters-Klaphake explains that the exhibition is shaped by Nabulime’s ‘conscious and thoughtful perception of individuals and society’. I agree but further interrogate this explanation, raising two questions, namely:

What images does Nabulime form as she ponders and links sculpture and our daily experiences?

Where Nabulime has contested our virtues (and faults) and proceeded to make sculptures to make her point, has her visual discourse, based on a gendered canon of visual representation shaped by formal instruction, completely escaped reasserting the very gendered biases she is contesting as virtues?

Shaping the male/female canon of visual representation: the role of the art school

Nabulime is a graduate of Margaret Trowell School of Industrial and Fine Arts (MTSIFA), from where she graduated as a sculptor before proceeding to the UK to pursue her doctoral studies. The role of formal art education in the production of the artist in Nabulime has received enough attention (Kyeyune writes about it in the catalogue for this exhibition).

Margaret Trowell School of Industrial and Fine Arts

However, one issue which Amanda Tumusiime (2011) has recently raised needs mention to direct this essay. In her Why have there been no great women artists (1973) Linda Nochlin analyses how women in England were excluded from art institutions and by the canons of art history.

Tumusiime takes this up while reflecting on Uganda’s experience. She observes and argues that, unlike women in England, women in Uganda have been deliberately admitted to the institutions of formal art education. Tumusiime’s argument is valid. All tertiary institutions in Uganda implement a policy of affirmative action. The policy addresses historical imbalances which have inhibited the education of the girl child. As a result, since the early 1990s the number of women graduating from MTSIFA has been increasing, although few of them are practising artists (Nagawa 2008).

Nabulime did not benefit from this policy; she graduated in the 1980s. However, like all university graduates, she accessed skills similar to those acquired by her male counterparts. She has held regular solo exhibitions in galleries and museums in Uganda and abroad.

Strong muscles as opposed to gentle curves

It is also obvious in the exhibition that, like her male counterparts, Nabulime is informed by the definition of male/female and masculine/feminine as distinct bipolar categories. As a gendered construct this assumption is rooted in the pedagogy offered at MTSIFA. The figure is instrumental in the production of art at MTSIFA; the school offers compulsory and elective (Minor and Major) courses in figure drawing.

Male models are posed, nude or otherwise, to allow students to appreciate the essentials of masculinity: strong muscles, aggressive, rigid curves, etc. Students are encouraged (in fact sometimes compelled) to depict the character of masculinity as an attribute of the male subject. Female models are posed to help students appreciate and depict the feminine characteristics of a woman: gentle curves, smooth body, round forms, etc.

The mantra is men are masculine, women are feminine and art must show the difference. As we see in this exhibition, Nabulime has taken up this mantra, although her visual discourse is different.

Masculine is Ssebo but not the omnipotent male

In her Ssebo (2000-2011) Nabulime sculpted a portrait of a man rendered in geometric shapes and enhanced with blue and red patinas. Its chin is stretched outwards. This is a good strategy which gives the sculpture a dynamic pose; it allows the sculpture to dialogue directly with the beholder through its thick lips.

The notion Ssebo, as used in the title for this work, refers to a patriarchal figure heading a household. It is a Luganda word which translates as ‘sir’, ‘husband’, or ‘father’ (for example in the play Omukazi muka ssebo, a popular drama of the eighties? now turned into a film), etc. Seen in this light, Ssebo becomes a portrait representing the head of a household.

“Ssebo”, wood, 32x23x48 inches. (c) Lilian Nabulime 2011.

However, the subject matter is political and based on Nabulime’s interpretation of certain historical circumstances which have informed her style. She writes that ‘the sculpture is made of geometrical angular…forms’ to remind her ‘of the patriarchal society we live in. Men are dominant and usually take control of decisions. They give an impression of [being] fearless, aggressive, powerful[,] prestige[ious], yet it may not be the case’ (my emphasis).

It could then be argued that Nabulime is not representing a specific person heading a traditional family, a historical man. Rather, the artist constructed a male figure whose claim to power and authority is illegitimate and contestable. It is this male figure that she uses to challenge patriarchal power and authority.

Female is feminine

Maama is a Luganda word for mother, a view presented in Nabulime’s Maama (2000-2011). The work represents a ‘voluminous portrait of a woman covering her head with a veil’. At page 11 of her catalogue Nabulime allows (in fact she ‘calls on’) viewers to challenge her interpretation of the works on display. And because of this, I hereby use this opportunity to challenge her reading.

“Maama”, wood, 47.5x25x26 inches. (c) Lilian Nabulime 2011.

Clearly Maama is based on round curves defining positives and negatives. The shape that extends from the head towards the base is solid, and separated by a negative at the neck. This does not make it a veil. Ascribing such a meaning leaves unexplained the other equally round shapes to which the artist does not give any particular name.

Instead she tells us, and I agree, that such round shapes aggregately serve the purpose of defining femininity as an ethnic attribute inscribed in ‘lovely round forms, curves and negatives [which] give a sense of warmth that draws you to the sculpture reflecting motherly figure’. I argue that the ethnic references (and resonances) in this statement are probably intended to give the work a sense of identity. (It is from Buganda in central Uganda; it is based on Baganda traditions.)

However, on the whole, and in the light of her Ssebo, she is clearly using roundness to create what feminist art historians have called difference. Nabulime is creating a woman while confirming that her woman-ness is different from a man and his man-ness: female and femininity are the same.

The political tone of Maama

It is here that the difference between Ssebo, who is defined in angular forms, and the motherly Maama, who is defined using lovely round forms, gains a political, rather than strictly aesthetic, tone. Clearly through her Maama Nabulime has conflated female, feminine and motherly while ascribing them to the woman as virtues. In doing this the artist has placed her footprint on a gendered path many male artists (including the author) have treaded before her (cf. Tumusiime 2011).

Children, wood, metal, nails, 22x12x1 inches. (c) Lilian Nabulime 2011.

However, it also important to admit that the artist unsettles some stereotypes about women. As if to demonstrate, Feminine (2000-2011) is a sculpture which, like Ssebo, is angular, and, unlike Maama, is roughly textured. The artist explains that the work ‘resembles a woman covered in drapery, made of copper nailed on wood’.

That the work resembles anything risks dragging Feminine into mimetic representation. This is probably inappropriate to a work based on scholarly interpretation, a modernist style, innovation and appropriation. However, it can be said that in the context of Nabulime’s interpretation it follows, logically, that the artist is using the canon of imagining and representing masculinity to imagine and represent femininity. There is an inversion here which we must take stock of.

The artist seems to suggest that a fertile woman has masculine characteristics (if symbolically). The artist further explains that Feminine ‘expresses feelings of an expectant female figure…[defined using]…angular forms’ and round ‘forms that may suggest seedlings emphasizing fertility…the Goddess of fertility’.

It thus follows that in this work, unlike in Maama, Nabulime’s feminist alignments gain sharp relief although her symbolism does not entirely alter the normative construct which insists that being feminine and fecund are women’s virtues. This essentialist view has divided feminists, informing a complex debate which I do not intend to extend.

Gendered art is art in the first place and gender in the second

“Namu”, wood and metal, 79x12x12 inches. Lilian Nabulime, 2011.

Suffice to note that we can confront similar feminist tones in her Namu (2000-2011).

In Namu the artist reduces the wood minimally to define essential features: the head, torso, abdomen and part of the lower limbs. She enhances the work with red and blue patinas to create highlights and improve the work’s aesthetic value while confirming that gendered art is art in the first place and gender in the second. The artist uses sisal ropes to define the torso of the woman.

The use of select manufactured objects as a form of art material and discourse harks back to the readymades and the way Marcel Duchamp explored them to challenge the canons of art and aesthetics.

However, Nabulime’s concerns are local and informed by Uganda’s circumstances. Her Namu challenges the canon of visual representation which sees the male as energetic, fearless, aggressive, powerful, and prestigious. She explains that her work is ‘gently and energetically developed from a solid log of wood’. Thus its energy lies within.

Secondly, in Buganda Namu is a short form for many names given to women: Namutebi, Namusisi, Namubiru, Namusoke, Namugaanyi, etc. can all be shortened to Namu. This, however, does not mean that the artist is representing a sitter called Namu because she is not.

Woman-ness not confined by/to motherhood and mothering

Her Namu is a portrait of all those women who stand out and whose woman-ness is not confined by/to motherhood and mothering. Thus the work is formally and politically distant from her Maama although, contrary to what the artist says, I do not entirely agree that it is politically distant from her Feminine.

Let me state here, without fear of contradiction, that reference to essentialist qualities enmeshes Namu into a gendered trap. In this exhibition Nabulime draws on the canons of representing a beautiful woman: a long neck, make-up, a round body, gentleness, fecundity, motherly love, etc. As such the artist insists that, although the woman in Namu is energetic, she is not aggressive; she is gentle.

Put another way, if masculinity is not exactly what it claims to be (as we learn in Ssebo), Nabulime does not [re/dis]place it with femininity. She still insists on the canon of representing the female (and not the male) as feminine albeit on terms where the feminine is not necessarily the subordinate.

Conclusion

Nabulime’s Sculptural figures reflected on daily experiences shows ways in which a woman artist ponders and links sculpture and our daily experiences. Nabulime faults the value system which ascribes the masculine virtue to men and not women.

Lilian Nabulime at her studio at the Makerere campus.

It is true that there are many conservative men who think they are omnipotent and omniscient. This is a daily experience which has been presented as natural in Uganda. These patriarchal traditional male figures are not the ones Nabulime gives visual expression. She does not refer to her works as ‘portraits’ in the literal sense.

Instead her works are gendered portraits in which the artist inquires into the dynamics of the hierarchy in which the masculine is male and powerful and the feminine is female, weak and marginal.

Challenging masculinity and femininity in complex and meaningful ways

It has been demonstrated in this essay that in her Sculptural figures reflected on daily experiences Nabulime unsettles the canonies of representing masculinity and femininity as absolute categories. However because these canonies are deeply rooted into formal art education offered at MTSIFA, which Nabulime herself received, she has not totally eliminated them. Nonetheless, she has inverted them in certain ways.

Thus Nabulime’s reflection on our patriarchal lives has not eliminated our deep-seated gendered biases. Instead, it has expanded her oeuvre as she creates images confirming the postulation that gendered images do not depict the lives of men and women – whether in reality or in discourse (Hatt & Klonk 2006:161) – but they bring categories of masculinity and femininity into being while challenging them in complex and meaningful ways.

Dr. Angelo Kakande has researched extensively on contemporary Ugandan art and the connection to politics. He is currently the Head of the Department of Design at MTSIFA.

AIDS Virus, wood, ceramic fired clay, bark cloth. Collaboration Sculpture by Nicole Fall and Lilian Nabulime .

Terracotta / Fired ceramic clay, 3x5x6 inches. (c) Lilian Nabulime 2011.

Children, wood, metal, nails, 22x12x1 inches. (c) Lilian Nabulime 2011.

Children, plywood, textiles, paint, 12x17 inches to 12x27 inches. (c) Lilian Nabulime 2011.

References

Dictionary.com, LLC. (2011). Dictionary.com online dictionary. www.dictionary.reference.com

Hatt, M. & Klonk, C. (2006). Art history: a critical introduction to its methods. Manchester: Manchester University Press.

Makerere Art Gallery. (2011). Sculptural figures reflected on daily experiences: solo exhibition by Dr Lillian Mary Nabulime.

McKeown, C. & Summers, E. (2005). Collins English dictionary. Glasgow: HarperCollins Publishers.

Nagawa, M. (2008). ‘The challenges and successes of women artists in Uganda’.In Arnold, M. (ed.) Art in eastern Africa. Dar es Salaam: Mkuki na Nyota Publishers: 145-168.

Nead, L.(1988). Myth of sexuality: representations of women in victorian Britain. London: Basil Blackwell.

Nochlin, L. (1971). ‘Art and sexual politics: why have there been no great women artists?’ In Hess, B. & Baker, C. (eds.) Art and sexual politics: women liberation, women artists and art history. New York: Macmillan Publishing Co.

Tumusiime A. C. 2011. Art and gender: imag[in]ing the new woman in contemporary art in Uganda. Unpublished Dlitt et Phil thesis, University of South Africa, Pretoria.

Kampala’s arts scene is on the move. There is no longer such a thing as “the only gallery in town”. These new white cubes appears in many shapes and frequencies, and provides great, new arenas for creators to meet potential buyers and patrons. But who are the new drivers behind the wheel?

Startjournal takes a look at the spin-offs, the garden parties, the corporate fueled charity events and the festivals.

By Dominic Muwanguzi

Performing artists at the MishMash gallery

An art gallery here and there coupled with regular art events in plush hotels could be interpreted as a sign that the visual art industry is growing fast today in Uganda. A decade ago or so, there were only two or three art galleries to write about, and the industry was dominated by a handful of artists who sold their work to the mzungus.

Today, you will run out of breath counting the galleries which have sprung up and those art events which are earmarked with pomp and glamour. Recently, Umoja art gallery and Design Agenda opened their doors to the growing number of art appreciators in this town.

Additionally,  the Fireworks Annual Art Exhibition (organized by Fireworks Advertising Agency), The MishMash (an open garden, once a month exhibition sponsored by Orange Uganda),  and Signature Art Exhibition (sponsored by several top-notch corporate companies) also  opened their doors to the blossoming art clientele.

Tracking the commission

One thing these temporary galleries seems to have in common is a lower commission compared to permanent art spaces. This is largely due to not having to pay annual house rent or fixed salaries for human resources. Also, art events might save money by not hiring professional curators. But neglecting curatorship may reduce the quality of the works on display.

In addition, there has been a trend among sporadic art events to fuse art exhibitions with charity. There is an agreement between the organizer and the artists to give a particular percentage of each painting sold – the commission in other cases – to charity.

The corporate sponsors get happy; they can add the event to their CSR-activities. The buyers feel good about it; rather an orphanage than a commercial art gallery. The organizer is satisfied; helping both artists and the needy. Surely a win-win situation for the society?

More space, better space?

Another difference is that art events like Signature art or FireWorks Advertising Exhibition have a sophisticated way of presenting art for sale. At least according to some of the clientele.

Guests admiring artwork from Arnold Birungi, Signature Art Final Exhibition at Kabira country club 2011

Paintings are hung on state-of-the-art panel boards instead of white washed walls, something that seem to attract the local press. And also, not to mention, the upside of a large space provided at the venue because these events are often held in hotels or outdoors.

Art should be art, and be exclusive

With such presentation and a noble cause to give to charity, one would think that there would not be any room for criticism. Maria Fischer of the AKA Gallery at Tulifanya in Kampala says she is concerned about the direction the art scene is taking, especially with the new wave of art events which seem to pop up now and again.

AKA Gallery at Tulifanya.

”Those are more party and music events where the art , as I understand it , is being sidelined and ignored, and they are often dominated by music, drinking and eating. By the way, already the terminology is confusing; art should be art and music is music, so that people know what to expect. In the end they are all called art festivals and nobody knows what will be the content or purpose.”

Maria is also worried about the growing trend of mass production. ”Especially the young artists are showing too much of the same type of works in too many places. The quality of art has gone down. It is boring that everybody‘s work is everywhere all the time. No more good surprises, no suspence,” the veteran of the Kampala arts scene says.

Maybe Maria’s concerns are sensible in a time when most artists are caught up in euphoria of excitement and concluding that the industry is finally on the right track?

Plough back the money to the arts industry

Daudi Karungi, an artist and the owner of Afriart Gallery in Kamwokya, says that the new players in the market are necessary.

Daudi Karungi, Afriart Gallery.

“These new art events are good for the industry because they increase the interest in the art. This is good for the Ugandan art business, because artists now are exposed to a larger clientele,” he says.

However, Daudi is largely concerned about the issue of fusing art with charity.

“Giving back to the needy by using art is not a bad idea. But the state of the art industry in Uganda is yet not strong enough and needs support itself. It would have been better if the priority of these organizers is to plough back this money into the industry, for example use it to organize the next art exhibition or host workshops with the artists,” he advises.

Is it optimal to give the fisherman a net?

Amidst such criticism, the supporters of these art events feel they are doing a noble cause.

While discussing the interests Tullow Oil has in the Ugandan art market – Tullow Oil has been a principal benefactor of the Signature art exhibition – the Corporate Affairs Manager told me that the interest of Tullow is to help creating an enterprise for the Ugandan artists. “It is better to give a fisherman a net, than to give him fish,” he told me.

Ugandan visual artists Ronex and Damba Ismail, Signature Art Final Exhibition at Kabira country club 2011.

Which of course is an interesting metaphor. But are the local net manufacturers able to develop their industry, if the corporate sector buys nets from abroad and give them to the fishermen for free? Then again, does such a net making industry exist at all locally?

Could one say that the excellent networkers of  event organizers like Signature undermines the establishment of a netmakers guild?

A networking ability

Moving away from this picture, Mr. Caleb Owino, the Managing Director of the Fireworks Advertising agency, explains why they organize their annual art exhibition: ”It is our corporate social responsibility to bring artists closer to business people. We have a great potential to do this, because we are an advertising company with a large network of clients.”

However, it would be anybody’s concern to find out what type of enterprise they are creating for the artists. Furthermore, if these organizers are not looking at this “corporate social responsibility” as a way of making profits for themselves.

To curate or not to curate?

To describe how these art events are organized, many of them solicit for already established artists and rarely do they give any platform for the young artists.

Also some of these art events – with the exception of the most recent Fireworks Annual art exhibition where Daudi Karungi was curator – do not have any kind of curatorship. This does indirectly affect the quality of work on display because there is no professional eye to look at it before it is put up for viewing.

Any artist would love a new opportunity

But these aspects never seem to be of any concern to the artists.  Once they hear that there is an art open art exhibition going to take place, they flock to the organizers and ask if they can be included on the list of the participants.

Why are artists interested in these art events, anyway?

According to one artist, who preferred to remain anonymous for fear of being blacklisted by the art galleries, he said that the MishMash and several other art events will teach conventional galleries to be more respectful to artists and creative in business.

“They never used to care at all because they knew they had a monopoly in this industry. They would treat many artists – especially the young ones – like nothing,” he said.

Anwar Sadat Nakibinge, who claims to have cashed in a lot at the Signature Art Exhibtion at Serena Hotel, says: “It is a kind of exhibition that the serious and hard-working creative artist should not miss because of the professionalism involved in it. And it even brings in new clients and art lovers.”

Visual artist Anwar Sadat Nakibinge, 2011.

Some artists feels these shows contribute too little to the industry

But not every artist is enthralled by these art events. Wasswa Donald of ArtPunch studio in Kasanga says that the real motive of these events is to put some already selling artists together and make some money of them.

“It is my belief that these shows haven’t contributed much to the general public in terms of educating it about art. It is usually a certain class that turns up and at times they get bored by seeing the same thing,” he laments.

Visual artist Waswa Donald at his studio ArtPunch, 2011.

To put Wasswa’s concerns in better perspective, almost all these art events are tagged by a sponsor’s name. Cases in point are ’The Annual Fireworks Exhibition’ and ’The Sadolin Mabarti Exhibition’. But at the end of the day a commercial company will only put let’s say 10 million shillings into an event if it adds something to the bottom line. They probably need the co-branding to add sales worth more than 10 million.

The art industry is getting “commodified”

Dr. George Kyeyune. (Photo by Harry Johnstone).

To strengthen Wasswa’s opinion, Dr. George Kyeyune of Makerere University says that these companies are commercial entities and they need to survive.

“They have a certain market and their intention is to make profits. In a bid to achieve this, they have to listen to the interests and desires of their partners who incidentally may prefer particular art styles to suit their taste,” he says.

The veteran artist also believes that artists are an accomplice to the current landscape of the art industry which he terms as “commodified”.

“Artists are too eager to make money and they compromise on the aesthetic meaning of their work,” he says.

To explain this statement better the sculptor artist says that at the recently concluded Sadolin Mabarti Art Challenge where he featured as one of the judges, he observed that many participating artists in the competition were eager to blend the motifs of Sadolin in their compositions perhaps as a way of influencing the final verdict of the organizers of the competition.

(Wasswa himself might have to feel guilty. His piece ’Waswad vs Sadolin’ incorporated the company name more than any of the other Mabarti-contributions.)

(c) Donald Wasswa, 2011. Photo by Roshan Karmali.

George says this was wrong because not only did it compromise on the quality of their art in the competition but also the ideal of the competition was overlooked by the participants.

Nevertheless, he advises that what should be done is to have all partners in the art industry to sit on around table and chart the way forward.

“We all have to sit together and decide how we can develop the art scene in Uganda without really compromising on the quality of work being put out there,” he says.

Charting the way forward

But that may seem to be a problem because clearly the intentions of both these permanent and temporary art spaces are divergent. Art galleries are here to make profits and network respective artists to potential clients and yet art event organizers feel essentially they are performing their corporate social responsibility with no profit gains.

Despite such a contrast of interests, it is important that the right path for the art industry in Uganda is clearly marked fast.

Upon such an urgent need, it remains to be seen if we will have a reversed trend of more professionalism at art exhibitions; artists thinking less of the money but the quality of their output, and also more importantly the issue of having art promoter who are sincere to the development of art with out any form of  pretence.

Dominic Muwanguzi is a freelance art Journalist with a strong dedication to uplifting the visual arts in Uganda.

All photos by Thomas Bjørnskau, startjournal.org except when stated otherwise.

Could the above be the ingredients that can be injected into Kampala’s visual arts scene to spice it up?

Over the past ten years, while the growth of the visual art industry has been negligible, it cannot be denied that it has grown. Tulifanya, Afri-Art and Umoja are some of the art galleries that have shot up to compete with the once-upon-a-time monopoly, Nommo gallery.

Written by Lindsey Kukunda

However, if you visit one gallery, the repetition of a select few artists ensures that eventually, you will start to feel like you’ve seen them all.

Art exhibitions held at venues like Fireworks Advertising, Emin Pasha restaurant, Serena Hotel are making visual art launches a must-attend, from books to sculptural exhibitions. If you’ve been to one exhibition, sooner or later, you will notice that once again, there is a sense of deja-vu.

Galas like ‘This is Uganda’, ‘La Ba’ and the ‘Bayimba Festival’ are showing Ugandans that the talent and potential of its artists is rife and still relatively unexposed. This is where you may catch a glimpse of unknown or upcoming artists, with a few popular ones thrown into the fray. However, after the festival, one has no idea how to get a hold of them, and others like them.

So where can the visual arts go from here?

Startjournal.org caught up with a few renowned artists to discover what they believed were the elements necessary for Kampala’s visual arts scene to be the best it can be.

Sometimes honesty makes all the difference

“Artists are not honest with themselves, and are therefore not honest to art,” said George Kyeyune.

“Art in Uganda is commercialised. As a consequence, artists will allow the style and subject matter of their work to be influenced by the tastes of the potential clients in the market.”

“If you study the art that is not destined to end up in someone’s collection, you will find that the messages are communicated unconventionally,” Kyeyune expounded. “Artists need to stretch boundaries and give the public something new and exciting.”

Unfortunately, the target market in this commercial business is the expatriate community which apparently has preconceived expectations of the content in African art, from floods and hunger, to less political matters like huts and bananas.

“If you come to Makerere’s Art Gallery, you will see what I mean,” Kyeyune concluded. “Without the desire to make a profit, you will find that the work there is almost bizarre!”

George Kyeyune

Damba Ismael voiced a similar opinion:

“Artists need to work for arts’ sake, and not for money from the Mzungu tourist who they think will pay for it,” he said. “This sort of thinking kills art in itself, because the artist will focus on what they think the client would like to purchase.”

Damba Ismail

Appreciation from our own

“If only art had the same focus and appreciation from the public that performing arts receive,” said Sheila Nakitende. “If hospitals and corporate offices had local art manifested in their interior decoration, that would encorage recognition and support from the locals.”

Sheila Nakitende

Fred Mutebi echoed her sentiments:

“Art would prosper if the leaders of the country would make an effort to promote it to the ordinary people, who are grossly ignorant about art. Art is not produced merely for arts’ sake. There is an underlying message that artists want to impart in their work.”

“It is a shame that those we expect to understand the value of art are not result-oriented. We have well educated politicians putting down a museum!” he lamented. “Also, every gallery has the same work. If they would specialise in particular disciplines, artists or styles, that would take us a long way.”

Another problem is the issue of ‘duplication of ideas’ in the arts industry.

Mutebi believes that ‘promoters of art’ like galleries, should package art differently for select groups of Ugandans. For his part, Mutebi makes prints of his art pieces that may be too expensive for the average Ugandan.

“If I’m selling an art piece at 1,000 dollars, I shall make small prints of it for between 100 to 1000 dollars,” he explained. “One expensive art piece will end up in someone’s bedroom. But five prints ensures that five people have my work at an affordable rate.”

Fred Mutebi

Stella Atal concurred.

“I cannot buy an expensive piece of artwork for a friend!” she laughed. “I think artists should sell original miniatures so that it can be distributed amongst Ugandans who don’t look for art on their own.”

Artists should know about more than their art

Andrew Umah Tete is an accountant passionate about his art, and has spent the last five years trying to break into the industry. As an upcoming artist, he has made an interesting observation about others like himself.

“Artists should embrace skills like presentation, information technology or enterprenuership. Someone may have poor art work but good marketing skills,” he has observed. “The market is saturated with well established artists, so if one is not creative, they will be edged out forever.”

“Artists are afraid to speak to the public, so how will they market their work?” Atal emphasized. “It’s not enough for galleries to just put up paintings. Artists should endeavour to mingle with the public at exhibitions for instance.”

Atal believes that the public would be interested in the work of an artist if they knew the story behind the art, and the depth of the message.

“They are also not easy to find,” she asserted. “They should build websites of their work, with a physical address for their workshop and a telephone number to use to contact them.”

Stella Atal

Perhaps collective art societies could bridge the artist-client gap

“If artists would cooperate and build a strong, organized and vibrant art society, they would have more to offer to clients,” Andrew Umah Tete offered. “And I do not mean a studio. Five or six open studios is a different matter from a society that encompasses experienced artists, fresh graduates and the uneducated with vast talent.”

Umah Tete compares these ‘societies’ to a trade union in terms of potential strength.

“Artists can source for work and contracts together,” he concluded. “It would be empowering for both artists and the public to know where opportunities are and where the market is going in the future.”

Art galleries – promoters of purely business?

“Our art galleries are self-centered and only focused on well-to-do artists, ignoring the upcoming ones,” complained Ronald Kerango. “They only exhibit art that they think will sell, and art should go beyond selling!”

Kerango believes that this harmful practise also limits art enthusiasts who eventually become tired of finding the same artists in every gallery.

“Work that sells is not necessarily the best artwork,” he insisted. “If they reached out to institutions that nurture art like Kyambogo and Makerere University, clients would get a lot more variety instead of being forced to purchase from a few particular artists consistently.”

Kerango believes that if galleries do not want to exhibit amateurs, then they should dedicate a few exhibitions a year to them. This will ensure that both their business and promotional bases are covered.

“If this cannot be done, then let them stop calling themselves ‘promoters’ and specify exactly where their focus lies,” he concluded. “At least then, clients will know that if they want alternative artists, they need to search a little deeper.”

Ronald 'Ro' Kerango

Joseph Ntensibe also believes that this is the biggest problem with the visual arts in Kampala that needs to be rectified for the public to enjoy the greatest benefits.

“There are a lot of good artists out of there who are not well known,” he said. “Galleries need to invest in unearthing and promoting the unknown talent that is out there.”

Ntensibe states that the focus of galleries on ‘art that will sell’ has led to an increase in quacks, so to speak.

“These artists call what they do ‘escapism’,” he laughed. “They splash colour on canvas, manoeuvre items here and there, and if a client does not understand it, they say: ‘This is modern art. If you do not understand it, it’s your problem’.”

So while potential clients may consider this art genius, Ntensibe says that the artist is simply ‘escaping’ from a lack of creativity.

Joseph Ntensibe

There has to be drama from the artist

To conclude, in the words of Joseph Ntensibe:

“Art is not supposed to be about mass production, or selling something trendy and marketable. There has to be due duty and drama from the artist. Without drama, it lacks entertainment.”

It now remains for art promoters and the public to not only seek out and enjoy this ‘entertainment’, but to take the steps necessary to support and promote it.

Lindsey Kukunda is a freelance arts journalist and a culture and lifestyle editor for the Kampala Dispatch news magazine.

Photos by Thomas Bjørnskau, startjournal.org.

What do you feel the Ugandan visual arts industry need? Please join the debate below!

On 14 October 2011 George William Kyeyune mounted his ‘The Kampala I Will Always Come Back To’. The exhibition showcased the artist’s recent paintings representing the hard sociopolitical struggles that the man/woman on the streets of Kampala goes through.

Ugandan artist George W. Kyeyune, 2011. Photo by Thomas Bjørnskau.

In this article I show and argue that as representations of life in Kampala, Kyeyune’s paintings are not portraits of individuals or groups. They are in the first place art. In the second, they are sanitised versions of reality intended to suit middle class and tourist aesthetic tastes. In the third place, they carry the risks of pandering to state propaganda.

By Angelo Kakande (F.J.)

Kyeyune is a prolific painter and sculptor. He graduated from the Margaret Trowell School of Industrial and Fine Arts (MTSIFA) with a Bachelor of Arts Fine Art degree in 1984.

George Kyeyune, Jesus Writing in the Sand, 1983, oil on canvas

Available evidence suggests that by the time he was in the second year of his undergraduate programme, Kyeyune had mastered the skill and expressionist style we see in his exhibition at Afriart Gallery.

For example, he had done his En Route from Mbale (1983), Mbale Trip (1983) and Suffering (1983). Three works which demonstrate the artist’s expressionist style and attention to emotion and form. He also did his Jesus Writing in the Sand (1983), a powerful painting in which he demonstrated his mastery of skill and understanding of colour theory.

The artist has lost some of the strength and control of media we see in these early works. First, and specifically in painting, at some point he resorted to using acrylics. He himself has conceded that acrylics are cheap and easy-to-handle. However, they have a kind of dryness which kills the work’s aesthetic value. He has now abandoned them; all the paintings in this exhibition are painted in oil.

Secondly, Kyeyune works on recycled canvasses. I have information to the effect that two clients refused to buy one of his works at Afriart Gallery exactly because the work was done on a recycled canvas. They argued that painting on used canvases is unprofessional.

Then, too, some students are bitter that he recycles their works. Unfortunately for them, university regulations do not permit students to claim their examination scripts. And yet dumping them would leave a dangerous carbon footprint. So Kyeyune has found how to recycle and put them to good use. As a result, he will, at least in the foreseeable future, most likely continue to paint on used canvasses.

The poor are happy in Kampala: Kyeyune’s view of life in the city

Kyeyune studied at the School of Oriental and African Studies, where he completed a PhD in Art History. When he returned from London people asked him to compare Kampala and London.

“There is nothing to compare,” he observed. “London is an organised city and Kampala lacks order” he added.

However, there is something in Kampala’s disorder which has grabbed Kyeyune’s attention because it “fascinates” him, namely: The poor in Kampala are happy.

“Today I saw a woman while driving to work. She was frying muwogo (cassava) in the most squalid conditions, sewerage [channels oozing past her], chicken pecking on the ground, etc. As a composition this was important. [It showed] how people carry on with this kind of life. Do they complain? They are poor but not unhappy. These things fascinate me.” (Kyeyune, personal interview, 14 November 2011).

In the above statement Kyeyune outlines the subject matter and political context of his exhibition. Clearly the artist does not imagine the serene, romantic Kampala which Philly Bongoley Lutaaya sang about in his Tugende e Kampala (Let’s Return to Kampala, 1990).

He also avoids the reference to criminality in the city in Akiiki Romeo’s song Kampala. He is also not like Bob Semakula, who in his video Ebibimba Bika from 2007 placed himself at the centre of poverty in the city.

He is just a keen observer of reality in Kampala.

George Kyeyune, Gossip I, 2011, oil on canvas

Kyeyune’s reference to “a woman” must be contextualised. We see in his Gossip I (2011) a woman moving past two other women who “gossip about her”, he explained.

Now, this is the problem of having an artist discussing his work. He imputes meaning which is not easily accessible. In fact the moral code is not obvious. What is more accessible is that the artist attends to character and hairstyle, something which we also find in At the Salon (2011). In this we see a woman squats at the centre of the composition attended to by a male manicurist and a female hairdresser in front of another woman who looks on as linen dries on a washing line.

George Kyeyune, At the Salon, 2011, oil on canvas

At the Salon strikes a certain moral code. Kyeyune is a Muganda from central Uganda. It is taboo for young or adult women to squat in Buganda. As Fred Ssebaale sang in his song Abasitamira Emmere (Women Who Squat while Preparing Food, 2007), a woman who squats can bring bad luck on the family, unemployment and poverty. This convention angers gender activists.

However, Kyeyune uses it as a trope to critique redundancy and unemployment in which many Kampalan residents are trapped.

George Kyeyune, Gossip II, 2011, oil on canvas

This is the same message in Gossip II (2011) where a woman hangs linen on a cloths wire as another woman passes by with a baby stuck on her back. She stiffens as if to avoid contact with the linen or the other woman in the space.

The artist does not open any line of communication between the two. He however told me that the painting is about the effect of gossip. This reading is not clear unless if he meant that the two women are neighbours torn apart by feuds, rumours, gossip and envy, which are the kinds of vices common in Kampala and which Alex Mukulu sang about in his Bannakampala (People of Kampala, 2006).

George Kyeyune, Telephone Call, 2011, oil on canvas

Arguably, then, whether in groups or as an individual – like the skimpily dressed woman in blue in Telephone Call (2011) – Kyeyune uses the image of existential woman to engage a moral critique. He however goes beyond morals to critique the wider economic problems which afflict the poor in Kampala.

For example he is fascinated at the way slum dwellers surmount their economic woes. They operate petty “businesses” like open-air manicure, pedicure and hairdressing salons (and we see this depicted in At the Salon to which I referred earlier).

But they also operate roadside food stalls in which they roast plantains in order to support their families. Kyeyune’s Roadside Vendor (2011) affirms this reality; the woman is obviously struggling. She has however overcome poverty and managed to feed and raise a healthy baby.

In short, Kampalans are not miserable; “they are poor but happy”, the artist observes.

George Kyeyune, Roadside Vendor, 2011, oil on canvas

Commitment to societal problems and the risk of pandering to state propaganda

One can safely argue that Kyeyune’s Kampala I Will Always Come Back testifies to the artist’s commitment to societal problems. However, this position creates three challenges.

The first challenge can be traced back to Elimo Njau who was Trowell’s student in 1954-57. He graduated with a Diploma in Fine Art, taught at Makerere Demonstration School (Now Makerere College School) before returning to his native Tanzania. In 1962 he hosted His Master’s Hobby (1962) at the Uganda Museum which coincided with Uganda’s independence.

Elimo Njau, Refugees, 1962, Concrete

In the text accompanying the show, Njau called on artists to abandon the ivory tower and use art to emancipate their marginalised communities. This is how he did his Refugees (1962) to draw attention to the plight of refugees (mainly from Rwanda) in Uganda.

Njau’s call has been answered.

For example, General Elly Tumwine is a soldier, artist and art educator. He joined the rebellion which unseated the brutal Obote regime in 1986. He is a Member of Parliament representing the Uganda People’s Defence Forces (UPDF). Together with Hussein Kyanjo (Member of Parliament for Makindye), he has joined a bi-partisan effort to hold ministers accused of selfishly benefiting from the country’s oil wealth accountable although there is the risk that the targeted ministers are wrongly accused using unverified information.

Fred Mutebi uses print-making and painting as a medium to challenge bad governance. Daudi Karungi is currently exhibiting several paintings at Afriart Gallery, including two interesting paintings in which he makes a case for the right to speak. Bruno Sserunkuuma, whose pottery Kyeyune has collected, uses pottery to reconstitute the decadent nation-state.

All these artists are expressing their rights inscribed in Article 19 of the International Convention on Civil and Political Rights and Article 29 of the 1995 Constitution of Uganda.

It is inferable from his statement that Kyeyune is following a similar path. Unlike Tumwine and Karungi, however, he does not assert the right to speak. Unlike Mutebi and Serunkuuma, he does not boldly challenge or re-order the administration of the nation-state.

He does not see ways in which his slum dwellers have used other means, for example Walk-to-Work demonstrations, to speak out. Instead he subtly asks if the right to hold government accountable and deliver really exists.

His line of inquiry is relevant. There is a growing debate in Uganda on whether the right to hold government accountable can be exercised. Uganda has a trigger-happy police which in 2010 killed a baby and shot the womb of a pregnant woman claiming provocation. As an institution the UPDF is ready and willing to help the police in its attacks on civilians. Both security agencies always cite Article 43(2) of the Constitution of Uganda (the limitation clause) and ‘orders from above’ for purposes of circumscribing and abusing people’s right to speak up.

The question for Kyeyune then is: In the midst of growing repression and militancy, can Ugandans hold the government accountable?

Although the question is relevant, Kyeyune does not answer it. Instead he makes a subtle intervention which carries with it the second challenge, that is: the risk of pandering to state propaganda.

The second challenge

The second challenge harks back to Gregory Maloba (1922-2007) who was Trowell’s Kenyan student in 1940. He taught at MTSIFA until 1966 when he returned to Kenya. In 1941 Trowell mounted the Makerere Art Show (1941) to celebrate the official opening of Makerere University’s administration block (commonly known as the Main Building). Works produced by students from the nascent MTSIFA were exhibited, including Gregory Maloba’s Death (1941).

Gregory Maloba, detail from Death, 1941, wood

Currently exhibited in the threatened Uganda Museum (threatened because it is likely to be sold), Death represents an allegorical animalistic figure crushing a frail human being with its two bare hands. Death represents the contention that human beings may be vulnerable but they are indestructible. Death was mainly an inquiry into wood as a medium of artistic expression; it was a reference to western artistic vocabulary shaped by Maloba’s access to Jacob Epstein’s work and Trowell’s pedagogy.

However, the colonial polity, threatened by WWII, received Death differently. Its existential subject matter was seen as a representation of the brutality of the Nazis and the indestructibility of the Allied forces together with the population standing behind them.

Against this re-reading a successful fusion was built between high art and the official war propaganda. Maloba (together with others) was co-opted into the colonial rhetoric of WWII – the War Effort – and commissioned to paint pictures grounded in the official version of WWII. This art-state project culminated in the Exhibition of War Painting (1942) which was also taken to London.

Maloba was lucky he aligned himself with the victors. However Martin Heidegger was unlucky he aligned himself with the Nazis; his Being and Time (1927) was exploited for official Nazi propaganda. This connection left a permanent, indefensible, indelible bad mark on the philosopher’s legacy.

Kyeyune must weight the risks.

Already he has participated in the construction of the Heroes Monument (2007). Located at Kabamba military barracks in Western Uganda, the monument depicts President Museveni as the embodiment of the 1981-86 rebellion which overthrew Obote’s regime.

He also took part in the ‘CHOGM Project’ which involved the making of The Stride, a group sculpture which projected, rather than questioned, the official ideology and agenda.

I estimate that although not funded by the state, Kyeyune’s The Kampala I Will Always Come Back To may suit the official explanation of the current socioeconomic situation in the country.

If his Kampalans do not question the state, he does not use his art to clearly and forcefully help them. Instead he suggests that the poor have overcome their problems, poor children are healthy after all, bodaboodas, manicure and salons help people to overcome poverty. As such his critical tool is blunted.

His exhibition taps into a trajectory which has been exploited by the government to support the current economic programmes which have pushed many into the poverty the artist visualises.

The third challenge arises out of Kyeyune’s use of humour to create aesthetics.

The Kampala I Will Always Come Back To: Injustices lost in aesthetics?

In Boodaboda II (2011) and Bayuda (2011) the artist uses the trope of an exaggerated load without suggesting that the motorcycle is overwhelmed. That way the failed transport system is overcome.

Called bodabodas, motorcycles are a permanent feature on Kampala’s crowded streets. They are used by many of those who cannot afford personal cars. They are a convenient way of beating traffic jams. They are commonly overloaded and recklessly ridden – as it is seen in his Bodabooda III (2011) where a rider has loaded many adults and children on the same motorcycle.

As such, statistics from the national referral Hospital Mulago show that many accidents on Uganda’s roads result from the recklessness of bodaboda cyclists which the police has failed to control.

George Kyeyune, Bodaboda III, 2011, oil on canvas

And yet through humour Kyeyune aestheticises (and thus sanitises) this recklessness. For instance in Boodaboda I (2011) he depicts a rider who has opened his shirt, creating a kangaroo-like pouch in which he places a child for safety. This is risky and reckless considering that the rider uncomfortably sits on the petrol tank of the motorcycle in order to create enough space for his pregnant passenger, his wife.

“He is lucky he has a bodaboda,” Kyeyune explains while contending that the man before us is not like many others whose women die at home owing to complications related to failure to get antenatal care. Others die in hospital owing to neglect.

Unable to find an ambulance, the man in Bodabooda I takes his wife to a health facility. He does not demand government action; he uses the only means available to him, his bodaboda. Through improvisation the man overcomes a life-threatening difficulty in a country where the healthcare system has collapsed.

Thus Kyeyune has reconstructed an act which borders on recklessness into triumph, benevolence and duty to family.

George Kyeyune, Bodaboda I, 2011, oil on canvas

Equally reckless is Tebaagaliza (2011), in which a vehicle has broken down. Some passengers frantically look on; others resign themselves to their fate. The space is not identifiably urban. This ambiguity isolates the scene from the poorly planned and crowded city. It allows us to see the ability to overcome a problem. Thus a mechanic is working without a jack and without removing the load that suffocates the broken-down vehicle.

In our interview the artist explained that his works are “a deliberate, conscious effort”; they are not spontaneous. They are a systematic, deliberate, artistic inquiry into life as it is in the city.

He adds humour in order to create art: “[T]he comical part of it is the practical decision [the subject] has taken. It is that kind of humour [which gives effect to] both the injustice” and the artistic experience in which “colour theory and technical things” are satisfied, he said.

He added that the experiences he captures may be sad. He, however, veils them in humour which “animates” them thus allowing the buyer to use the “work to decorate [his/her] house” although there is a risk that sometimes this intervention “overwhelm[s] the subject matter”. (Kyeyune, personal interview, 14 November 2011).

To state it differently, The Kampala I Will Always Come Back To is a sanitised representation in which recklessness and economic injustice have been aestheticised for purposes of satisfying the bourgeoisie tastes of the middle class and tourist market which buys Kyeyune’s work.

As such humour removes his representations from their lived reality.

Conclusion

Being a representation in which indestructible individuals take charge of their destiny, The Kampala I Will Always Come Back To is grounded in an existentialist view which risks pandering to state propaganda.

Confronted with donor criticism (through Wikileaks and reductions in bilateral assistance), incessant public demonstrations, and mainly the Walk-to-Work demonstrations, the state would want to hear that individuals in the city are mastering their destiny.

I argue that Kyeyune’s voice, if visual, is a public testimony that the urban population is happy.

This message is risky. It confirms government’s view that things are not as bad as the opposition seems to “maliciously” portray in the international media (Facebook, BBC, Al Jazeera, etc).

However it has been rejected by the opposition. Besides, the depreciating shilling, runaway inflation, permanent power outages, rising unemployment and bloody riots currently raging in Kampala do not paint a picture of a poor but happy population.

Dr. Angelo Kakande has researched extensively on contemporary Ugandan art and the connection to politics. He is currently the Head of the Department of Design at MTSIFA.

Retrospective exhibitions are not very often held in Uganda. There are two main reasons; firstly, most artists sell to the expatriate community and tourists who pack their treasures and return home. Secondly, Nommo Gallery – the national gallery – has no policy, later on the money to collect from artists.

By Dr. George Kyeyune (PhD)

Mukasa’s retrospective exhibition has been possible because, as a painter, he was extremely industrious and for him art was his life – his oxygen as one of the contemporary Ugandan singers recently put it.

He had a large collection of paintings and drawings in storage at home. But more importantly, Mukasa appealed not only to the external market, but also to the local emerging clientele.

His legacy lives on

Some of the work on this recent show “In Memory of Geoffrey Mukasa” (November 2011) at the AKA Gallery (formerly Tulifanya Gallery) was on loan from his local collectors. The gallery, which has been the trusted exhibition space for Mukasa for over a decade, has been vigilant in ensuring that his legacy lives on. This exhibition is a step in that direction.

From the Geoffrey Mukasa-exhibition at AKA Gallery, Kampala, 2011.

Mukasa graduated in painting from Lucknow College of Arts and Crafts, India in 1989. Both India and Uganda were former British colonies. However, while India regained her independence in 1947 after over 200 years of colonial occupation, Uganda was “protected” for just over 60 years and became a nation state in 1962.

The period of revivalism (renewal of past traditions in the context of modern developments) which swept across India at the turn of the 20^th century are just beginning to take roots in Uganda.

When the Kiira electric car was launched in November 2011, President Museveni said that Makerere is now waking up from a deep slumber and has started to address the realities of the time.

Mukasa was therefore lucky to be in India at a time when experimentation in formal content and subject matter had matured and was a commonplace discussion both in art colleges and among the Indian artists fraternity. Judging from the boldness and restlessness of the paintings in this exhibition, Mukasa must have actively participated in these debates. It is clear that India made a strong impression on him.

Consequently, the attitude to art making and visual impressions he returned with made his work rather odd among the local audience, as we shall discover shortly.

In search of local heritage

It is noteworthy that Uganda – where Mukasa grew up and had his primary and secondary education – did not inherit a rich legacy of this kind of art. Instead, decorative art, basketry, myths and legends abounded.

The West, which until recently has controlled scholarship in African art, did not highly regard these products. In addition, the school syllabus for art in Uganda – that had prepared Mukasa for university education – described baskets and mats as mere crafts. It is the principles and elements of art in painting, sculpture, ceramics and graphics that up to now continue to form the key features of art education and production in Uganda. Therefore, Mukasa had to undergo major ideological shifts in India to be current.

Returning to Uganda

Upon his return to Uganda Mukasa was enrolled in Uganda Television as a graphic designer, which at the time was equipped with rudimentary technology. UTV did not give the young and energetic Mukasa the outlet for his artistic energy. Alongside his TV assignments, Mukasa painted at home.

His debut on the gallery scene was a joint exhibition with the late Fabian Mpagi at the newly refurbished Sheraton Hotel in 1990. The two exhibited totally different approaches to art.

Mpagi represented a typical Makerere Art School style, where the technical handling of materials, anatomy and color theory were highly valued. Not that these were not important, but they seemed to overshadow the artistry bit. Mpagi had in any case been a student/lecturer at Makerere, who during the 70s pursued a masters program, but dropped out because of the persistent internal wrangling at the time.

Mukasa’s paintings on the other hand were less polished. They retained a certain kind of rustic and raw energy that indeed echoed the difficulties of the post civil war period.

The luminous paintings, radiant with saturated colors that he applied with ease and confidence, reminded us that we live in the tropics and moreover along the equator. But in these colors, we also experience a sense of resilience and hope, something that Ugandans desperately needed to hear and be told again and again. Further still, these loud colors gave the paintings a strong presence and power.

From the Geoffrey Mukasa-exhibition at AKA Gallery, Kampala, 2011.

Succumbed to the expectations of India

Mukasa chose to violate the laws of perspective, as these could have compromised his capacity for emphasis. He reassessed anatomy in plants, animals and human figures in an eccentric way that returns us to the ‘classical’ African carvings.

Given that his African tradition lacked figurative representations, and moreover he had been dimly exposed to them at home, it is reasonable to say that Mukasa may have succumbed to the expectations of India, of what a modern African artists ought to paint like: Neo-traditional African art. Carved masks and figures were in India perceived as the principal hallmarks of African art. A mistaken belief – probably inherited from the former colonial masters.

Several artists working along similar lines like Francis Nnaggenda have argued that the absence of the figure in the traditional art of East Africa does not suggest that the spectacular carvings from west and central Africa are not part of our inherence. Indeed our claim to it is legitimate.

Yet interestingly, it is the case that Mukasa’s single and most important influence for his paintings was not the classical African sculpture, but rather a well-known Indian painter, M.F. Husain, who flowered in the late 40s. During this time, a Progressive Artists Group was formed and through it, Husain was exposed to, and strongly influenced by the work of Emil Nolde and Oskar Kokoschka. These had themselves seen the art of Africa and Oceania on postcards or ethnographic museums in Europe.

So it is possible that Mukasa was triggered to respond to his African sensibilities through a secondary source. In other words, Mukasa discovered Africa from an Indian in India.

Favorite subjects rooted in social life

Since that famous and perhaps launching joint exhibition, Mukasa never looked back. He left his job at the Uganda Television to concentrate on art. The surroundings at Munyonyo, where he lived since the early 1990s, has only recently become as affluent. Munyonyo was semi-urban but with all the trappings of a village life.

Mukasa did not have to go far to find his favorite subjects rooted in social life and culture. The chicken that freely forage in the backyard are frequently depicted in his paintings. The fish at the nearby landing site are also a common sight. Fruits and vegetables are grown and vended in this area throughout the year. But these are more than food items. They play a major part in the ancestral worship and other activities of cultural significance.

And culture has seen a resurgence in the recent past, particularly after the restoration of the monarchies in the 90s. To amplify their presence and significance, these objects are schematized.

The reclining, sitting and standing figures dominate Mukasa’s tightly packed canvases. Their heads are composed in a frontal posture and they often sit incongruously on their supporting bodies, while their faces wear a solemn and yet pleasant gaze. With their gesturing hands displayed at the front of their bodies, these figures remind us of the early 20^th century African photography. Subjects being photographed always insisted on showing the full presence of their hands lest they would be mistaken for lepers. The hands on Mukasa’s figures, however, are active and primarily used as devices to balance the composition.

Experimenting with local materials

It is easy to assume that Mukasa was a returning refugee, given that many artists in exile returned during the same time – late 80s. Mukasa and the returnees however had one thing in common, they were exposed to new possibilities in art albeit in differing circumstances, which they shared with the home bound artists. They experimented with all sorts of conceivable materials in their surroundings and made “new” art.

In Mukasa’s paintings for example, old newspapers were given a new identity once they were pasted on the canvas. With such mosaic innovations, Mukasa confirmed that materials for art need not be expensive.

What is more, the reclaimed materials were recognizable and familiar to his local audience, which made Mukasa’s art emblematic and accessible to the ordinary Ugandans.

As an artist Mukasa was never afraid to take on new challenges; he taught us to be bold and courageous. He straddled the past and the present and his contribution to the young subject of contemporary art in Uganda has been immense.

Mukasa stretched the borders of painting beyond the expected, and deservedly; today he is celebrated as a leading Ugandan painter of the 20^th century who was key in raising the profile of art in Uganda. Mukasa’s legacy will continue to reverberate across the country and beyond for many years to come.

Dr George Kyeyune is an associate professor at Makerere University art school and definitely Uganda’s leading expressionist, who has helped many local artists and viewers find themselves in his simple narratives about urban life in Kampala.

I have been following the trends in Uganda’s visual environment in the last decade, with keen interest and I have noted something rather distinct. While the events in art that made headlines in the period of economic recovery (1986-2000) were led by seasoned artists with predictable results, those in the last decade have been dominated by younger artists most of whom in the early stages of their careers.

Written by Professor George Kyeyune

Knowledge of anatomy and perspective for which the success of painting for example was measured in the past, has today lost its credence in favor of experiments with formal content. The young artists have found comfort and repose in appropriating motifs from local resources and imaginatively domesticating them in their art. Even when they want to tell stories, they are rarely explicit; instead stories become a context for painting or sculpture.

Yet, as they carry out these experiments, they remain focused on their primary goal: To sustain the client’s interest and attention, the bulk of whom still remain the expatriate community.

Edison Mugalu at the exhibition at AKA Gallery, February 2012.

Edison Mugalu typifies this cadre of younger artists who have taken to making art as their full-time employment and many have made a success of it. Their work exhibit a bold and aggressive attitude which is also reflected in their marketing strategies.

From Triangle to Ngoma

Ten years ago, Mugalu made his first humble but significant steps on an eventful journey that has brought him to prominence and recognition as a jewel in contemporary Ugandan art. Interestingly, he owes his success to the efforts of Robert Loder, a British promoter of art in Africa, whom he had never even seen or met. Below I explain how this happened.

Apart from collecting contemporary African Art, Robert Loder is reputed for introducing and guiding the Triangle International Artists Workshops in Africa – the first one being hosted in South Africa in the early 1980s.

In Uganda, the first and so far the only international artists workshop took place in 1998 at a former Leprosy Center in Buluba near Iganga. Because of logistical challenges, Ngoma International Artists Workshop (as it was baptized) did not continue the following year as was expected. Fortunately, Ford Foundation agreed to support Artists Studios where artists would come and hire studio spaces at a nominal fee.

The philosophy of experimentation and exploration of unfamiliar territory in art was applied at the Ngoma Artists Studio (NAS) because of its flexible structures which gave artists the opportunity to experiment. This same philosophy had proved successful for both the Triangle International Workshops and Ngoma International Artists Workshop.

Former art students at Makerere School of Industrial and Fine Arts, such as Juuko Hoods and Damba Ismail, were some of the pioneer artists at this centre. The new direction in experimental art ignited a new movement in the new millennium which for its freshness and energy captured the imagination of art collectors.

Owino business

As these events were unfolding, Mugalu had already settled down in business selling second-hand clothes at Owino, a downtown market in Kampala. He had dropped out of school after his Ordinary Level because his mother did not have money for him to further his education. His father was less bothered.

Mugalu hoped, that his savings from the Owino business would enable him to return to school. He did, but for a short time, because the demands of his business left him very little time to concentrate at school.

In Uganda, there are no one-stop shopping centers for art supplies and in many cases, even essential art supplies are not [always] readily available; artist have to improvise. Often times, artists paint on curtain material because of its heavy texture. These were available on Mugalu’s stall, or if not, his neighbor would have them in stock.

As Jjuko was walking in Owino Market looking for ‘canvas’ material, he saw Mugalu, his old friend. The two had been classmates at St Florence Secondary School Bugembe. Jjuko was shocked that his friend had taken to a life of a vendor, moreover in a despised low-class market. Jjuko broke the good news to his friend about the profitable business of art, reminding him how he used to excel in art at school.

“You are sitting on your talent,” Jjuko said – imploring and persuading him to join the NAS.

The legacy of Trowell

Bugembe Secondary School was lucky to have had an imaginative and dedicated teacher who ‘fired’ his students with exciting tasks. “If you want to paint a fight,” Mr. Henry Mawanda would say, “make sure everything in the frame is fighting – including the sky.”

In Mawanda we see echoes of Trowell’s philosophy, of seeking inspiration from local resources. 70 years later, her legacy is still relevant and was in this case key in unlocking the creative potential of these teenagers.

With reluctance and doubt Mugalu left his Owino business and with his meager savings, he stocked colors and canvases to paint on. Once at the Ngoma Artists Resource Centre, he saw that he had a lot of catching up to do. He dedicated the first two years on practicing and learning new skills.

During this time, Ngoma organized a one week artists workshop at Nabinonya on the shore of lake Victoria. The terms and conditions of this workshop, which were also in line with the ideals of Ngoma Artists Studios as well as the Triangle International Artists Workshops, encouraged participants to use anything conceivable within their surroundings to make art.

The tightness of the Nabinonya workshop in terms of materials was later to become a liberating experience for the budding artist. Mugalu learnt to innovate, and later in his career, he could still make art even in times of scarcity. The paintings he made in this workshop boosted his spirits, indeed the once skeptical but determined artist was able to for the time sell his work at a realistic price.

Mugalu believed that the main reason that his work attracted so much attention was because the conditions of the workshop allowed him to follow his heart. And the substance of these conditions are unmistakably traceable to Robert Loder’s efforts.

Tapping into Makerere

Mugalu was not insular. He made trips to the Makerere School of Industrial and Fine Arts where he got acquainted with the art produced there. Makerere’s art had until recently been constrained  by institutional guidelines – in spite of the fact that artists like Francis Nnaggenda who is known for his experimental approach had taught there for a long time (1978-2001).

What Mugalu noted there was the overly emphasis on principles and elements of art. To some students, these would be restrictive and debilitating, while to others, there provided a perfect platform to walk away from, to a risky unknown. Mugalu had already seen the benefits of tasting the unknown, so his encounter with Makerere, albeit for a brief period, was useful particularly in that respect.

It is within this context that I disagree with Mugalu when he refers to himself as a self-taught artist and he does not qualify his assertions. In my view, he is trained, but in a non-formal way given that he has surrounded himself by and works with trained artists.

It is important to remember that at the start of the millennium, Uganda’s economy had become stable and the market for art generally was booming. New art galleries emerged and these included Afriart Gallery, Design Agenda gallery, Okapi Gallery – all located in Kampala – and Equation Gallery (Aid a Child) at the equator, mid-way between Masaka and Kampala. Mugalu and his contemporaries took advantage of these favorable conditions for making and selling art and worked with abandon.

Pleasant and expressionistic paintings

From 2005, Mugalu was on the way to stardom as he had now gained confidence and knew the taste of his clients very well. His subjects are taken from his childhood he fondly reminisces and life in general around him. Growing up in Kayunga in the neighborhood of river Sezibwa allowed him to swim and play in water and try out fishing. Boats, water and fishermen dominate his paintings.

To him color comes naturally. He applies it without laboring; spontaneously and swiftly he creates pleasant and expressionistic paintings.  With his figures Mugalu is able to say so much with so little.

Because of his love for maritime life, he has from time to time taken trips to Dar-es-salaam and Zanzibar and made studies of local life there too. The narrow and sunny streets of Zanzibar town animated by busy animals and people in white and garbs are painted with affection.

Mugalu has also picked interest in the ‘exotic’ life of the Karamojong as if pleading with government to preserve their traditional lifestyle. Yet, just like any other progressive and modern Ugandan, the Karamojong deserve better.

The rapid success of Mona Studios

In 2004, Mugalu left the protecting wings of Ngoma and together with Anwar Sadat, another budding artist with a similar background, moved on to form Mona Art Studios in Kamwokya. Kamwokya is a well-known place for its squalid conditions, but this did not deter the two determined young artists who knew their goals.

Mona Artists Studios, named after Mugalu’s daughter Mona, became very successful, attracting high-profile art collectors from embassies, government departments and the private sector officials.

It soon became obvious that the location of Mona Art Studios was militating against the high standards the two artists had so scrupulously built. Paintings were being sold for much less than their real market value because the neighbors were Malwa drinkers and the open sewer flowed past the studios which also doubled as a residence for the artists.

Mona moved to a more decent apartment in Bukoto and with money flowing in uninterrupted Mugalu embarked on a buying land and constructing buildings for both rent and studio space.

The drawback of success

His rapid economic growth and moreover at such a young age was a real concern to the Local Council (LC) members of Kireka where he built his first house. These distinguished members of society who in fact are well-respected opinion leaders had never heard about art as a profession that serious people could engage in. This, sadly, goes to prove that art has very few if any advocates even at the grassroots.

Ugandan visual artist Edison Mugalu at his home and studio in Kireka. Photo by Thomas Bjørnskau.

Yet on the other hand, one would not entirely blame our honourable leaders for being so ignorant about such an important resource. Our education system, which prepared them for their roles in society, has up to now failed to appreciate that this country will develop – not necessarily through privileging white-collar job seekers – but through supporting those entrepreneurs who can innovatively use their surroundings and create jobs.

Mugalu told me that no amount of explanation could convince anyone on the village that his rosy pecuniary manifestations are not attributable thuggery or drug pushing. Yet as an artist, he was making honest business, creating employment and more importantly contributing to the cultural diversity of the Kireka community.

What saved Mugalu from undue scrutiny was the interest he developed in music. When he accumulated a large body of work, in 2008, Mugalu could afford to take off time from painting and compose and play songs. He formed the Mona Lisa Family Band that is up to now doing very well. His nominal status as a musician was a relief to the LCs, who concluded that their random and security risk resident as they previously thought was in fact somewhat employed.

Today Mugalu is a comfortable and successful painter who is ready to give back to community. He is a living testimony that where there is a will there is a way. His art has touched many reminding us that there is a purpose in life.

Dr. George Kyeyune is an associate professor at Makerere University art school and definitely Uganda’s leading expressionist, who has helped many local artists and viewers find themselves in his simple narratives about urban life in Kampala.

Now that Uganda has just celebrated 50 years of independence, it will take the nation more 50 years to celebrate a century. Although most of us might be dead by that time, one thing is for certain, Kampala’s artistic landmarks, the monuments, will still be standing.

Written by Nakisanze Segawa

Here are some of the most significant monuments that represent our past and the future.

The Stride

The CHOGM-monument, themed The Stride, romanticizes the energetic fraternity of the Commonwealth countries, symbolized by the confident stride of the family group.   Located behind the Parliament Gardens, the construction of the monument was contracted to Kann Artists by the tourism industry prior to the country’s historic hosting of the Commonwealth Head of States in November 2007, and was done by Maria Naita, David Kigozi and Segamwenge Henry in collaboration with other artists.

The cooper and stainless monument which depicts a nucleus family gives a somewhat unrealistic impression of a western type of family in contrast to the extended Ugandan one.

However, when contacted, the supervisor of the monument construction, Dr George Kyeyune, explained that “the idea of a man and a woman holding a flag with a sunflower tainted on it and their one child walking in the middle of the two parents doesn’t necessarily symbolize a system of a nucleus family, but rather a beginning of a new family”.

He goes ahead to add that they had to look at the finances put up by the Ministry of Tourism in order to come up with a great piece of work, but of a minimal cost.

With cloths wrapped around them in the same way natives used to dress before the introduction of the literacy culture in the country, it is through their son who is holding a book that the parents in the monument seem to perceive a brighter future.

Detail from 'The Stride'

The Journey

Another monument, which is also the newest in Kampala, is located on the much secured independence grounds of the Kololo airstrip. Themed The Journey this monument depicts five youthful individuals, among which three of them are carrying a flag, taking steps up on a pedestal.

“The five youthful individuals represent the five decades Uganda has passed through as an independent state,” elaborates Dr Kyeyune who worked together with General Elly Tumwine and other artists on this one.

He goes ahead and explains that the story behind the monument is that of inspiration. It tells of the long journey that Uganda has taken to reach where it is today: “It has not been a smooth flow from 9^th October 1962 to 9^th October 2012. Uganda has been through thick and thin, but a nation still has to grow,” he adds.

Detail from 'The Journey'

The Independence Monument

Along Speke Road stands the six metres tall Independence Monument that was raised to celebrate Uganda’s much awaited independence in 1962 and to portray the state of self-leadership Uganda that had attained.

The monument was built by Gregory Magoba, one of Uganda’s professional sculptors at the time, and it depicts a mother with widened legs carrying a child whose hands are raised. Behind the monument is a concrete wall that has until previously been revamped with a painting depicting Uganda’s political life, but now stands plain in like a grey wall.

When asked what he thought of the independence landmark, Assimwe Bonaventure, a sculpture, painter, web designer, poet and a graduate from Margaret Trowell School of Industrial and Fine Arts, says that the sculptor was great as an artist. But Assimwe also wondered whether the late Mr. Magoba achieved to deliver the independence message to the people through this piece of work:

“Until someone points out that the monument celebrates the county’s independence, it’s hard for a layman to marry the two—to relate the monument to independence,”he adds.

Detail from 'The Independence Monument'

Kabaka Mutesa II

A few metres from the Independence Monument stands Kabaka Mutesa II’s Monument at the junction of Speke Road and Nile Avenue. As the 35^th of Buganda’s kings, he was also the first president of the country, whose contribution to the country’s independence can not be denied.

The monument, showing Mutesa standing on a pedestal, displays his military training as the Kabaka is dressed in military fatigue.

“In relation to the pedestal, the sculpture is almost invisible,” says Assimwe, “but when you pay close attention, it is detailed, realistic and dynamic. Every part of it is proportional. An admirable piece of work,” he adds.

The sculpture, which was unveiled by Mutesa’s own son, the current Kabaka of Buganda in 2009, was funded by Mr. Gordon Wavaamuno, the Bank of Uganda and KCC.

Detail from 'Kabaka Mutesa II Monument'

Sir Apolo Kaggwa

Another monument that is themed the Statue of Leadership is of Sir Apolo Kaggwa, situated in the face of Amber House along Kampala Road.

Apolo Kaggwa is commonly known and celebrated for pioneering the campaign of the usage of electricity in the country, especially amongst his fellow Baganda. Using his position as the Katikiro in the 1890’s up to the mid 1920’s, he based his own vision and foresight for development to persuade the people of Buganda to embrace Christianity and all the development that came with it.

He also encouraged Ugandans to grow coffee as a cash crop. Although he didn’t live to experience 1962, his vision for an elitist self-governance Uganda, through providing his own land to set up schools that would later create a platform for Ugandans to get educated and then campaign for self-governance, couldn’t be ignored.

Detail from 'The Statue of Leadership'

With a critical eye, Assimwe thinks that the artist of this seven feet statue intended to be realistic but failed at that: “The propositions of the whole statue figure aren’t right,” he explains, “the arms are so rigid, so small and so short; one thumb is too small and the other too big. It’s not dynamic.  And the head is too big on the shoulders,” he adds.

“The statue is just empty,” says Sissy a pedestrian I talked to. “It doesn’t talk to me. It’s almost invisible yet it’s vast and located on the main road side,” she adds. “Even the little bio about him written below is in very small letters, making it hard for me to read them.”

She then looks up at me with her eyebrows raised and asks: “Is this really the sir Apolo Kaggwa I read about in history books? Well … his neck appears shorter than it is in photos of him.”

Nakisanze Segawa is an aspring writer and the  third winner of the 2010 Bereverly Nambozo Poetry award. Currentlly she is working on her first novel, which is also historical about Kabaka Mwanga.

All photos by Startjournal/Thomas Bjørnskau.

On 15^th April 2012 Fas Fas hosted the Nudes 2012 organized by Ronex Ahimbisibwe. In our interview Ahimbisibwe averred that the objective of the show was to demystify the human body; in an interview with the press Robinah Nansubuga, the Manager FasFas, said nudity is a form of art that should not be a subject of shame.

By Angelo Kakande F.J 2012

This exhibition came twelve years after The First Exhibition of Uganda Artists on “The Nude” 2000 (Nude 2000 hereinafter) which was hosted at the Nommo Gallery on 4^th – 18^th September 2000. The show was organised to free the naked body from continuous abuse and stigma. Nude 2012 also came eleven years after The Nude 2^nd Annual Exhibition 2001 (Nude 2001) hereinafter) which was hosted at the Nommo Gallery on 17^th – 30^th September 2001. Captured in bold in the catalogue, the objective of Nude 2001 was to “help the public go learn more about the anatomy, the beauty of the body and free the mind from unnecessary misconceptions and to upraise the level of art appreciation” (Mutungi 2001, n.p).

Cover of the catalogue The Nude 2000 Exhibition

Cover of the catalogue The Nude 2001 Exhibition

Put simply, Nude 2012 shared with Nude 2000 and Nude 2001 the objective of salvaging the human form and freeing it from any pornographic connotations. The three exhibitions served to demystify the naked human body emphasising what Kyeyune (2000,n.p) called its aesthetic appeal.

Beyond aesthetics

In this three-part essay I look beyond the claim for the aesthetic appeal. I attend two ways in which the production and circulation of the nude in contemporary Ugandan art[i] in general and nude exhibitions in particular fuses the line between aesthetics and pornography; art and non-art.

I use evidence from three nude exhibitions, decided court cases, the press and interviews to demonstrate that the nude shows present an opportunity to artists to speak the unspeakable. However located in an environment characterised by selective sanctioning and a hybrid of free speech and constrained freedoms (Tripp 2010), the artists have had to move cautiously. In the middle of this caution the Nommo Gallery abandoned the nude shows in 2001; FasFas Gallery has had to alter visual strategies as a way out.

I show that the production of nude art in Uganda has moved from the predictable search for nakedness which borders on vulgarity into a complex strategy exploring the wider demand for pornography and the State’s inability to enforce a strict legal regime against the consumption of pornography. Their visual productions have slipped between pornography and nudity, political comment and aesthetics. Unable to fix them to either of the categories the State has failed to clamp down on them; the artworks have eluded total censure.

Nudity: is it freedom of artistic expression or immorality

Given the centrality of the life class (and study of anatomy) in the teaching of Contemporary art in Uganda, the production of nude is not uncommon. Life drawing (currently called drawing general) is a core course which every art student must pass before graduating with a Bachelor’s Degree of Makerere University (and this is the case in other institutions where contemporary art is taught).

In our interview Ahimbisibwe noted that he was exposed to half-clothed models during the life class. He is correct. Half-clothed and un-clothed female and male models have been used during drawing sessions since the 1940s when Margaret Trowell sent her first student, Gregory Maloba, to the Medical School for drawing lessons. Since the 1990s the unclothed model has been rare in the life class at Makerere University. This change has been caused by financial constraints.

Joseph Mugisha LIFE DRAWING CLASS

The Collins Concise English Dictionary (2008, 1142) (the dictionary hereinafter) states that the word “nude” comes from the Latin nudus. It refers to “a naked figure, esp. in painting, sculpture, etc”. The dictionary states that nudity is a state or fact of being nude; nakedness. Stated differently, nude and nudity are descriptive words referring to an unclothed figure as seen in works of art and design. The dictionary therefore confers an aesthetic dimension to the nude and nudity. Clearly this definition does not problematize nude and nudity.

The dictionary also describes nude as a state of being “completely unclothed; undressed… 2 having no covering…” Many languages in Uganda take this translation. Literally naked, nakedness and nudity mean obwereere in Luganda; it means busya in Runyankore (spoken by the Banyankore). Philip Kwesiga was alive to these two and related translations when he painted his Busya [Naked]. What is not so obvious in Kwesiga’s painting is the fact that this meaning is problematic: it is embarrassing and a taboo for one to appear naked in the public space; it is illegal. For example Section 81(2) of the Prisons Act, 2006 provides that “stripping a prisoner naked….is prohibited”. Section 81(2) of the Police Act, 2006 has a similar prohibition.

Phillip Kwesiga BUSYA-NAKED

Suggesting that it is not abnormal to be naked, Mutungi (2000,n.p) wondered why we get embarrassed “when we look at our [naked] bodies”. In 2000 Kyeyune answered this question. He argued that our socialization “forbids us from exposing our [naked] bodies publicly”; the public display of nakedness represents vice and immorality (Kyeyune, 2000, n.d).

Obviously Uganda has no single voice on this matter. For example, pictures of naked Bagisu men dancing along urban streets during their circumcision rituals would be unsightly in Ankole and Buganda where Mutungi and Kyeyune hail from.

However they are not at all offensive in Mbale among the Bagisu. In effect the culture of the Bagisu cannot, and does not, forbid them from exposing their naked bodies publicly at least during circumcision. In fact pictures of naked Bagisu men, painted with all sorts of concoctions, have been regularly published by the print and electronic media to celebrate Uganda’s cultural diversity.

In this context it become difficult to estimate who do not state who constitutes Mutungi’s “we” and and Kyeyune’s “us” as a subject.

Editorial decisions

Nevertheless Mutugi’s and Kyeyune’s subjects help us to understand who constitutes the public in Uganda’s cultural discourse. In The New Vision , published on 20 September 2000, it was in the public interest for the editor to publish a full-color image in which the Australian police chased a naked man who had invaded stadium to disrupt the women’s football semi-final match between Brazil and Australia[ii].

Again on the 14 September 2000 Daily Monitor published a picture of a semi-clothed female protester arrested for disrupting the World Economic Summit. Probably these protesters had gone beyond free speech and political expression to public nuisance and outrage. The print media seems to have published these incidents to expose an unsightly act: an outrage to the educated world citizenry which watched the football match.

It is my contention then that arguably Mutungi’s “we” and Kyeyune’s “us” generally include the elite, educated public whose tastes the newspapers, TVs and galleries in Uganda cater for. It is this public whose “viewing situations” (Nead, 1992, 91) the State often regulates by policing the boundaries of cultural distinction between obscene pornography on the one hand and artistic expression on the other.

This position creates challenges for the use and mass-circulation of completely unclothed figures in art. I contend that the press faced this challenge. For example at page 18 of Daily Monitor published on 1 September 2000 this challenge became evident. The author published a commentary on Nude 2000. He remarked that “…several pieces with vivid shapes of both men and women naked…” were exhibited. To accompany the article, and also to confirm his point, he used Samuel Kakaire’s painting, called Sistine Chapel. Supporting its body with its left arm, it folds its right hand backwards to allow the viewer access to the display of its heavily muscled anatomy.

Samuel Kakaire SISTINE CHAPEL

Now, it is my view that there was nothing offensive about this painting. I concede that the painting celebrates essentialised masculinity represented by a nude male figure but I am not prepared to admit that it offends morals. However there was a problem with the section marked by large penis.

In fact it was by far less exaggerated than the three penises in Kakaire’s Karamojong Egotism which was also exhibited in the Nude 2000 show and was later published on page 17 Daily Monitor of 7 September 2000. In fact in The New Vision run a commentary on the show accompanied by a picture of the masculinised Kakaire’s Sistine Chapel set in contrast with Jacob Odama’s In the Salon depicting a nude, standing, female figure arranging her hair. This was part of its campaign to give its readers access to information.

Samuel Kakaire KARAMONJONG EGOTISM

Daily Monitor had mounted a similar ambitious campaign in the early 1990s. Government responded by denying it revenue and affecting its growth and profitability in the period 1993-1998[iii]. Government also relied on repressive colonial laws on sedition[iv] and publication of false news to shield itself from criticism. It took court battles, like Charles Onyango Obbo & Anor v AG[v] for the situation to change.

The situation was further complicated by the absence of a law giving effect to Article 41 of the 1995 Constitution which grants access to information in the hands of government. This law, the Access to Information Act (2005), was enacted after pressure from a Private Members Bill. As such by 2000 Daily Monitor was cautious leaving The New Vision as the most serious forum for criticising government programs and actions until 2006 when its Chief Editor, William Pike, was replaced by the pro-NRM Robert Kabushenga[vi].

Most importantly, and as Enock Kimbowa explained at page 17 of Daily Monitor published on 7 September 2000, Kakaire’s Sistine Chapel contrasted sharply with its Italian precedents, Micheal Angelo Buonarroti’s works in the Sistine Chapel. Buonarroti was slightly because the artist kept the “private parts out of sight”[vii]. As a result, although largely phallic and innocuous, Kakaire’s Sistine Chapel was considered offensive by the editor. He thus edited it cropping out the penis leaving a black circular patch imposed on the painting.

Clearly then, the Nude 2000 raised interesting legal, economic, moral and political questions on the function of nudity and a nude.

Samuel Kakaire SISTINE CHAPEL edited and published in the press

Freedom of expression

Now, it is criminal to produce, exhibit, publish or broadcast pornography and obscene drawings, prints, paintings, printed matter, pictures, posters, emblems, photographs, cinematograph films or any other objects which tend to corrupt morals in Uganda. The law limits the freedom of expression guaranteed Article 29 of the Constitution of the Republic of the Constitution of Uganda.

It can be stated with certainty that the right to freedom of expression is not absolute. It can be limited under the law although it cannot be impaired under conditions which cannot be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society[viii]. This is the combined effect of Article 29 of the 1995 Constitution of Uganda and, among others, Section 7 of the Electronic Media Act Cap. 104, Section 3 of the Press and Journalist Act Cap. 105 and Section 166(1)(a) and (c) of the Penal Code Cap. 120.

As it was observed by the late Mulenga JSC[ix] in the case of Charles Onyango Obbo & Another v AG[x] the Constitution of Uganda does not define what freedom of expression means or give its scope. To fill this gap, Mulenga JSC read and adopted the definition provided in the Uganda’s 1962 Constitution which is reflected in International and Regional human rights law. He then defined, at page 8, and 11, freedom of expression as holding, receiving and imparting all forms of opinions, ideas and information. He argued that this definition does not exclude opinions, ideas and information which are controversial, erroneous or unpleasant as long as they are expressed within the law. Byamugisha Ag. JSC observed, the right must be enjoyed without offending public morality. As Mulenga JSC held, the onus is on the state to prove that any limitations imposed are justifiable[xi].

I concede that this position remained unclear until the Onyango Obbo case. This uncertainty may explain the caution and the ambivalence with which the editor of Daily Monitor approached the publication of Kakaire’s Sistine Chapel. I suspect he initially considered the painting capable of offending the morals of his readers’ and hence constituting a crime under the law. He probably later changed his mind when he realised he had impaired an aesthetic statement; a work of art. I have not come across a decision whose facts are immediately related to Uganda’s contemporary art/design.

A South African case

However in the case of Roy Stephen Curtis v Ministry of Security & Ors[xii] the petitioner had been arrested and charged for production and possession of sexually explicit video footage. The matter was referred to the South African Constitutional Court to decide whether among others, the trial did not infringe on the accused’s freedom and speech and artistic expression.

Mokgoro J traced the colonial, and imperialist, origins of the definition and crime of indecency and how it was inherited in the postcolonial (and post-apartheid) Republic of South Africa. He observed that by 1995 this crime had outgrown its colonial moralism and Common Law legacy and gained a specifically political dimension. In the process its definition gained a “sweeping ambit” for which Courts struggled to find scope and objective test. The question for Court then was to determine if it comported with the freedom of expression guaranteed by the Constitution. In deciding this matter Court addressed itself to a more specific question of whether “sexually explicit material” was a category of speech and expression protected by the Constitution” and if so whether the possession of sexually explicit material is protected under free speech?

Arguing that rights guaranteed by the Constitution of South Africa can only be limited outside the limitations imposed by the limitation clause in the country’s constitution (which is materially similar to Article 43 of the Constitution of Uganda), Modgoro J. found at page 17 that

… the freedom of artistic creativity would be seriously undermined if it did not encompass the right of individuals to unhampered access to sources of artistic and intellectual inspiration, including (or, one might say, especially), those expressions which convey sentiments that are threatened with suppression by the state or with marginalisation in civil society, because they are deemed dangerous, offensive, subversive, or irrelevant.

He then held at page 21 “that sexually expressive speech is subject to the protection of …the Constitution, and that such protection must necessarily extend to the right to possess such material” (my emphasis). I am therefore of the opinion that in the wake of this decision the law must not gag free artistic expression under the guise of protecting morality.

Such sanction is very wide: it denies the right to access information which is sexually explicit; it inhibits the right to free speech and artistic expression. Instead, the law must apply the limitations imposed by the constitutional limitation clause to protect the vulnerable – this what Mokgoro J. calls the “harm principle”. Let me also add the detail at page 57 of the judgement in the Independent Newspapers (Pty) Ltd v Minister for Intelligence Services [xiii] namely that: the law must protect “the interests of [human] dignity, gender equality and the rights of children”.

A US Supreme Court decision

Consistent with this principle South African’s penal laws have been amended to restrict protection to children and people with physical and mental disabilities[xiv]. A similar move is yet to seen in Uganda. The country’s penal and related laws[xv] still carry their imperialist colonial legacy. There is no urgency to reconsider them. Instead, the country preoccupied with extremist views as seen in the Bahati (or Anti-homosexuality) Bill and the Marriage and Divorce Bill among other laws before parliament.

I contend that the right to the freedom of artistic expression is not absolute. Nevertheless, there is a need to strike a strategic balance between the protection of free artistic expression on the one hand and what Mulenga JSC in Onyango Obbo’s case (supra) calls “social considerations” or “community interest”[xvi] (read public morality) on the other.

This debate has been growing within the civic, cultural and legal circles since the US Supreme Court decision in the Case of City of Erie et al v PAP’s (also called the G-string cases) which characterised exotic (or nude) dance as a form of artistic expression which is a form of expressive conduct and is constitutionally protected. Grant Wahlquist (2011) writes that this case exposed the need to ascertain the intention of the artist rather than the assumed immoral effect of what she produces and exhibits before her audience.

Put in another way the production of nudity for art, and not for harmful pornography and obscenity, has an artistic merit and cannot, and must not, be unreasonably and unjustifiably sanctioned. I concede that it is government’s duty to draw a line between freedom of artistic expression, and harmful pornography and obscenity which must be policed. However this can only be done within the parameters set in Article 43 of the Constitution.

In the process forms of nudity, even if sexually explicit, shall be assured of protection as forms of artistic expression; many nude exhibitions will be held without fear of sanctions.

Art vs pornography

There is another angle though. In her Female Nude: Art, Obscenity and Sexuality (1992) Lynda Nead analysed the historical moments in which nudity and pornography, as visual categories, became separate. In the process nudity became an ideal form of art while pornography remained obscene and not art.

She observed that “[m]ore than any other subject the female nude connotes ‘Art’. The framed image of a female image body, hung on the wall of an art gallery, is shorthand for art more generally; it is an icon of western culture, a symbol of civilization and accomplishment” (Nead 1992,1; my emphasis).

It has elements of sensuality. It is removed from pornography which is a low category of non-art which is a basis for sensory fulfilment, or what Kenneth Clark (1957) calls an “incentive for action”. It is part of universal aesthetics: an object of contemplation to which no bodily desire must (and can) be attached. It is my opinion that it is here that many of the arguments for the Nude 2000, Nude 2001 and Nudes 2012 are located on this platform.

However, Nead also unsettled the female nude arguing that in western cultural discourse nudity has become a “means of containing femininity and female sexuality” and a procedure and convention through which high art controls the unruly body of a woman “placing it within the securing boundaries” of aesthetic discourse.

To understand this development, Nead urges us to look beyond high art per-se and see its relationship with patriarchal culture. That way we make an inquiry into how “…the image of the female body displayed in the gallery relate to other images of the female body produced within mass-culture?” (Nead 1992,1).

Rosie Kabuye PRIDE

Gendered bias

Like Clark’s book, Nead’s book is probably dated. After Nead other arguments have emerged. For example Mira Schor (1997) used a painting of a female vagina on a book in which she contended that the penis and masculinity are male. This was a deliberately essentialist discourse on art which would challenge Amanda Tumusiime’s (and Nead’s) contention that gender is a construct and not a biological phenomenon. For Schor the debate was critical to open new areas of inquiry into the production of masculinity (and its circulation through art?).

Nead’s book is however still relevant to the discussion on the production and exhibition of nudity in contemporary Ugandan art as seen in the celebrated nude exhibitions.

In fact by taking up Nead’s question at a theoretical and methodological level, Amanda Tumusiime (2012) has analysed ways in which Contemporary artists have joined the battle against the non-traditional women in Uganda contemporary. She demonstrated that as a result of this battle, forms of artistic expression depicting women in suggestive poses have in different but related ways become icons of perversity akin to those circulated by mass-culture and pornography. In the process the line separating high and low art, striptease (commonly called kimansulo), pornography and art, has faded.

As a result Tumusiime argues that nudity has ceased being a neutral art form and become loaded with pejorative connotations intended to attack and demean non-traditional women as a way of pushing them out of the public domain. As such Tumusiime observed that Nude 2000 had a gendered bias.

I extend this debate as I attend to the sociopolitical context of representations of men and women nudity in the three exhibitions. I engage the scion between the right to free speech, art, pornography, public opinion and policy. In response to, and in an attempt to demystify such a scion, three exhibitions have been held in succession. I start with Nude 2000.

Part two of this Essay will be published in the December-issue of Startjournal.org.

Download the full essay as PDF (1,2 MB)

Angelo Kakande FJ has researched extensively on contemporary Ugandan art and the connection to politics. He is currently the Head of the Department of Design at MTSIFA.

Do you want to learn about the development of the Ugandan Visual Arts scene? In this article, Margaret Nagawa starts with the impact of Margaret Trowell and Cecil Todd, and gives a brief overview of some of the developments in the art scene all the way up to the recent KLA ART 012.

Written by Margaret Nagawa

Of Tradition and Modernity

The development of modern art in Uganda is unthinkable without Margaret Trowell whose Mulago home verandah art classes in 1936 were the beginning of the Makerere Art School. She was a Slade School educated artist who developed a curriculum that was respectful of Ugandan art-making traditions.

In 1938, she mounted an exhibition of her students’ artworks in Namirembe Synod Hall, Kampala, which subsequently travelled to the Imperial Institute, South Kensington, London in 1939. Ten years later she installed another exhibition, a survey of her past students’ work in the Makerere main hall who were now working as artists and teachers. Following the same pattern of a decade earlier, this exhibition travelled to London in 1949 (Kyeyune, 2003).

Margaret Trowell School of Industrial and Fine Arts, Makerere University, Kampala.

Trowell was concerned to get her students’ artworks into the local and international marketplace and also to gain academic and political legitimacy for the art school she had started. This interface with audiences was the first evidence of a break from the traditional genres practice where art and audience interaction did not necessitate a mediator.

For example, a potter who was well-known in his community meant that those who needed his wares dealt directly with him. This new art form was taken through an intermediary where the artists and the artwork were separated taking the art outside the production context and into a separate space where it was supposed to independently articulate its merits.

Art galleries eventually opened in Kampala with Nommo Gallery on Kampala Road opening in 1964 as an active art space with a vibrant exhibition program.

Nommo Gallery, Nakasero, Kampala.

Modern art in Uganda is also unthinkable without Cecil Todd who problematized the relationship between traditional art genres and modern art. In his avant-garde attempt to supersede traditional art forms, he represented the most argued pursuit of modernity and rejection of African traditions (Kyeyune, 2003: 123). He too saw a need to mount exhibitions in order to exhibit students’ and lecturers’ artworks thereby opening the Makerere Art Gallery in 1969.

Lecturers at the art school then included Jonathan Kingdon who was instrumental in running a varied program to support the teaching and learning. The tumultuous political circumstances of the 1970’s and 1980’s saw a total disappearance of gallery activity where artists fled into exile, stopped making art altogether, or were compelled to turn to batik-making due to scarcity of art supplies. Batiks were cheaper to make and were not in the art canon so they were mediated through craft shops and familial and social networks.

With relative political stability since the 1990’s, an economic environment conducive to investment, an emerging Ugandan middle class with changing tastes, as well as an inflow of foreign investors, development organizations and foreign missions, the number of people with an interest in the arts is growing. This has led to more art galleries opening including The Gallery Café in 1993, Nnyanzi Art Gallery and Studio, AKA Gallery, and AfriArt Gallery among others.

The Art

Until a dozen years ago, Makerere Art School and Art Gallery were a nucleus around which most artists revolved in the theatre of alliance and rejection. Margaret Trowell’s influence is renowned and her ideas of inclusion of local art genres were loved and hated in turn by successive generations of lecturers and students.

When art departments in Nkumba and Kyambogo universities started offering terminal qualifications in art as a discipline independent of education or commerce, Makerere was no longer the centre of art education. However, there is still a discernible similarity in focus because it is often the same lecturers that now teach in the many art schools cropping up.

Individual styles are discernible in the art of most mature artists like Rose Namubiru Kirumira and are distinct in their references to Uganda’s history while simultaneously showing international influences. However, among the younger artists some common features are shared, including primary motifs like fish, wildlife and spirals.

Startjournal.org interviewed Rose Kirumira two years ago.

Rose Namubiru Kirumira at her studio at Makerere campus.

Some art is more concerned with addressing the individual in an introspective viewing, while others like Maria Naita in her ’maama yampa ne taata yampa’ painting series of 2008 and Lillian Nabulime tackling HIV/Aids awareness among women, are concerned with addressing the group, among whom it catalyzes conversation engaging the shared memories of the country’s history.

Read Angelo Kakande’s essay on Lilian Nabulime’s art here.

Artwork by Maria Naita.

The visual language is both spectacularly bright as in the paintings of Anwar Sadat Nakibinge, and muted as in the bark cloth tapestries of Ivan Yakuze. The traditional genres of art also appear in such duality with the pale brown baskets and brown bark cloth of the Baganda to the brightly coloured baskets and mats of the Banubbi.

Some artists capture the present, chronicling social issues that have passed the test of local relevance by circulating through the journalistic media, social networks and international policy. For example, Eria Nsubuga Sane’s commentary on the Mabira forest deforestation threat of 2011; Fred Mutebi on corrupt politicians sucking the country dry; and the dangers of female genital mutilation captured by Stella Atal in her fashion performance pieces.

Eria Nsubuga Sane’s exhibition was revied in startjournal.org one year ago.

Artwork by Eria Nsubuga ‘Sane’ 2011.

Art is mediated through commercial art galleries like the AKA Gallery; educational institutions like Makerere Art Gallery, the Uganda Museum and Nkumba Art Gallery; artist-run spaces often in shared art studios like Karibu Arts in Kamwokya, and solo home studio display areas like Sanaa Gateja.

Startjournal.org interviewed Sanaa Gateja two years ago.

In the rush to exhibit the profuse production of art in Uganda, the critical content of the art threatens to be lost without consistent cataloguing, historicizing, and theorizing of the art, activities and relationships surrounding it.

The City and the Art

Since the nineteenth century, Kampala has thrived as a centre of Uganda’s political power, commercial and administrative activities under the leadership of either the Baganda in the Kibuga, Mengo, the British colonial project, or the independent state government. Kampala is a city of possibilities when people can make their mark or not, but continue to try. The primary values of hard work, perseverance and creativity are evident in Katwe’s inventive welders; shrewd traders in Kikuubo; the vibrant education sector and the wider business community. This is evidenced in Samson Senkaaba’s ’Kampala ssi kibuga kya ba fala’, 2003 poetry performances and mass-produced poetry-emblazoned T-shirts.

Artists have tended to concentrate geographically around Kampala finding space for solo and collaborative work. This highlights the importance of the city as a place for vibrant economic, political and creative processes, where artists feed off of each other’s creativity and their analogous practice validates them all while seeking viewer responses. Few Ugandan artists have acquired international renown, and those who have, like Francis Nnaggenda are unknown outside a small circle of specialists.

The artists produce mainly for an art market of expatriates temporarily living in Uganda, and very minutely for the political and economic institutions of Uganda, as well as a few wealthy Ugandans. It is therefore apt that the KLA ART 012 is starting off in this city highlighting the strategic role of informal environments for art.

The Shift: KLA ART 012

The collaborative approach to working that artists have been drawn to for years, is the same approach that arts institutions are now taking in order to attract more and varied audiences for the arts through a multi-location art festival in Kampala: KLA ART 012.

By pooling their curatorial vision, organizational skills and good relationships with artists, a public display of art is a way to prompt new art unfettered by financial anxiety, and to catalyze discussion about art among people who would not normally access a gallery. This collaborative act shows us that the values of community and hard work still survive.

Often the encounter with art in a gallery setting has the audience as passive recipients of the art on display. KLA ART 012 chooses to transform the viewer from onlooker to participant in the art process by placing the art containers in publicly accessible non-traditional spaces for art to easily reach the pedestrian viewer. The projects are of a social commentary and interventional nature, proposing to address urban problems such as potholes illustrated by Ronex Ahimbisibwe.

Startjournal.org interviewed Ronex a year ago.

Artwork by Ronex at KLA ART 012.

The containers in which ’12 Boxes Moving’ is installed, are familiar to Ugandans as they have ubiquitously served as converted living and work spaces where a whole business area in Kampala was named after them — Container Village near the old taxi park. Yet ’12 Boxes Moving’ are encountered in unexpected places like near the Mukwano roundabout.

KLA ART 012 was reviewed in the last issue of Startjournal.org.

Art exhibition space on the move. Artwork by Waswad, KLA ART 012.

Artists need time, working space, materials, supportive family and friends, and audiences. But above all, a culture that respects the skill and intellectual rigor that goes into making art, one that values a multitude of creative endeavors, in order for them to succeed in giving voice to those characteristics of life that words alone cannot express. Interactivity is encouraged in the curatorial stance where it is hoped that visitors to the art containers will engage with the unique artists’ ideas adding them to the knowledge base they already possess.

This collaborative initiative, although initiated by art institutions, is contributing to the de-centering of art galleries, the questioning of what art could be, relationships in art processes and dissemination, but most significantly the recognition of audiences as varied types of people and central in the conversation with artists and art. This references back to the practice in traditional art genres where audiences are central as in the Luganda saying ’Omuweesi ekyamuzimbya ku kkubo, kulagirirwa’ — the reason a blacksmith established his practice by the thoroughfare is to be guided.

Reference cited

Kyeyune, George. 2003. Art in Uganda in the 20th Century. Unpublished PhD thesis, SOAS, University of London.

Margaret Nagawa is a Ugandan artist, independent curator and PhD candidate at Margaret Trowell School of Industrial and Fine Arts, Makerere University, currently living in Addis Ababa.

This article was originally written for and published in the Official Catalogue of KLA ART 012.

Want to learn more about the Ugandan visual arts scene?

• Creativity, innovation and experimentation sets a new pace for the Ugandan visual arts
• Group studios in Uganda: The Challenges of a Collective
• Evolution of visual arts in Uganda

On 4 September the Nommo Gallery launched Nude 2000 amid high expectations, pomp and ceremony[i]. Its subject matter was not like an exhibition that was held at the newly opened Cassava Republic[ii] in which Akiiki and Etyang featured artworks celebrating Uganda’s traditions, traditional dresses and dress codes. It was also distant from Bruno Sserunkuuma’s ceramics show at the French Embassy in which the artist attended to the mastery of skill[iii].

By Angelo Kakande F.J 2012

This is Part II of the essay, click here to read Part I first.

The Director of Nommo Gallery, Emanuel Mutungi, wrote in the catalogue explaining the objective of the show. He argued that Nude 2000 was intended to demystify the human body which had been “abused by many” religious and other negative stereotypes. He wondered why “[n]obody hates himself or herself yet many of us shy away when we look at our [naked] bodies” (Mutungi 2000, n.p). These views were reproduced in the press; they were published in The New Vision of 1 September 2000 for example. Mutungi does not answer his question.

Cover of the catalogue The Nude 2000 Exhibition

However in my estimation Kyeyune (2000, n.p) provides some good answers to it. He wrote in the catalogue that Nude 2000 served two functions; it allowed art to function “as a piece of reflection as well as aesthetic appeal” (Kyeyune 2000, n.p). He, without elaboration, observed that Nude 2000 captured the “spirit of its time”. He thus persuaded those who visited the show to view “nudity in context”. He was concerned that the exhibition risked “standing ambiguously except when interpreted in its [social political] context.”

Clearly Kyeyune was alluding to the context in which, as Trowell (1954) observed, contemporary art in Uganda mirrors its society as it assumes a political function—for instance the political nexus in Kakande (2008) and the gender imag[in]ed in Tumusiime (2012). He observed that the context in which Nude 2000 was located was one in which the mass-circulated image of a naked person was one of embarrassment.

The press was awash with pictures of unclothed and half-clothed, accompanying stories concerning adultery, rape, murder, theft, etc. Let me agree with him and mention that faced with a rising criminality, mob justice became a convenient way of dealing with crime; it still is[iv]. Most crucially, at the time of Nude 2000 graphic images of half-clothed and totally unclothed people, some badly beaten or set ablaze, were common in the vernacular and English language press[v]. So Kyeyune’s argument is valid.

Nude 2000: A Strategy for Free Speech and Artistic Expression

I concede that Nude 2000 was marked with variety. Some artists experimented with material and media: Byuma explored ebony wood in sculpture and did Nudeness; Kabiito Richard presented a collage resulting from a combination of traditional baskets, basketry and oil painting; Mzili Mujunga did a wood print in his Silhouette; Ernest Kigozi exhibited Two men, a watercolour in which two nude male figures are set in a ritual dance or wrestle; Lydia Mugambi presented Nude, an experimental project in which she used black ink on paper; Margaret Nagawa used water colour and chalk on paper.

Some works were a product of creative imagination: Joseph Sematimba’s Nude depicting a head-less female figure reclining across the picture space is a good example. Others were done from a life class: Stephen Gwotcho’s Seated Lady can be cited.

Many of the works were about nudity as art. It is therefore my opinion that these works had nothing to do with embarrassment. There was nothing sexually explicit about them.

I also admit that some artists did work which was graphic bordering on vulgarity. For example Fred Kizito Ec[s]tasy was probably the most sexually explicit. The artist depicted a naked couple. To the right the woman faces up and folds her hands backwards while setting her legs apart to allow the man to stand between them. The man holds his erect penis in his right hand as he advances towards the woman. The painting seems to have been cropped out of an X-rated movie, its modernist style ensures its position as art.

Fred Kigozi ECTASY

But some images were subtly erotic. For example in his Unleashed, Clovis Mutebi captured a reclining female figure. Unlike the reclining figure in Samson Ssenkaaba’s drawing titled In my Room, in which the woman comfortably claimed her private space and controlled it before using it to explore the erotic possibilities of her body, it is as seen in the artist’s other painting titled In the Sofa, Mutebi’s figure sits in an uncomfortable pose set in a disorganised space. She is disorientated. She supports herself (or leans) against an assortment of objects which litter her space.

Clovis Mutebi UNLEASHED

Samson Ssenkaaba IN MY ROOM

Samson Ssenkaaba IN MY SOFA

By the two artists appropriating the gesture of a woman spreading her legs (which is taboo in most communities in Uganda) they begin to use nudity to question the character of women and women spaces—a critique which is also seen in Johnson Mwase’s Untitled.

Other works were ambiguous but communicated an urgent message. For instance Francis Ifee painted Not in the mood. He depicted an identifiably heterosexual couple. The woman stands in front, she shifts her right hip allowing her left leg to loosen and part creating a space through which we see a flaccid penis of the man seated at the back. The couple is anonymous thus not embarrassed. The artist attends to male and female anatomy as if to invite the beholder to compare and contrast the two. Yet he explained to Daily Monitor published on 7 September 2000 that his images were part of the struggle to control the spread of HIV-AIDS[vi].

Francis Ifee NOT IN THE MOOD

HIV/AIDS stands for the Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome, a disease which weakens the body by attacking its defence mechanism. By 2000, the HIV/AIDS disease had become a scourge inviting pragmatic solutions. Promiscuity and unsafe sex were blamed for spreading the disease. In such an environment the state responded by rounding up all alleged prostitutes and detained them under inhuman and degrading circumstances[vii] and charged them with trumped up charges of being idle and disorderly. It still does today^[viii].

This intervention was welcomed by the conservatives and traditionalists. However, it was gendered and intended to punish women and not men[ix]. It attracted negative criticism including from within the ruling party[x].

Unsightly Nudes to Communicate Social Messages

The body politic had its own interventions, including those which bordered on criminality. To demonstrate, on 16 September 2000 The New Vision published a story in which 45 year-old Marita Aketo “had sex with her son Elemu Juventine (25) as a way of protecting him from acquiring Aids”. This act is illegal since the combined effect of Sections 149 and 150 of the Penal Code (Cap. 120) criminalises incest. The incident shocked Aketo’s neighbourhood; she was rejected as insane. However, Aketo explained that “it was safer for him [meaning her son] to satisfy his sexual needs with her instead of going out for girls” and risk his life.

It is my contention that in light of interventions like Aketo’s, Ifee’s works gain new meaning. The artist used unsightly nude images to communicate a socially-relevant message although it was ambiguously expressed.

In summary, on 19 September 2000 Daily Monitor published an article titled “You Don’t say! You Don’t Say!”[xi] Coming a day after the closure of Nude 2000, the article evaluated the success of the show. “How do you undress a strange woman, put her against a wall and get away with it?” the author asked. “You paint her” he responded suggesting that the show had demystified the human body.

This view was probably informed by the largely rehearsed script circulated by Mutungi, the Director of Nommo Gallery, and published in several articles[xii]. It harks back to those romanticist notions in which artists (and art) led public opinion.

As I have argued elsewhere public opinion and policy in Uganda is not shaped by exhibitions of art (see Kakande 2008, 326). But since what we read in Daily Monitor was the stated objective behind the Nude 2000, I would argue that the show was a therefore a success to that extent.

Nevertheless, I am not prepared to admit that the show completely changed attitudes towards nudity. For the avoidance of doubt, nudity is still taboo in spite of the fact that it is freely circulated in art and art exhibitions.

What Nude 2000 succeeded in doing, in my opinion, was to open another public forum for a discussion on the sensitive subject of the naked body. In the process artistic expression became a vehicle for free speech allowing the production, transmission and possession of unsightly visual information, some of which was sexually explicit. This right is guaranteed under domestic, regional and international law.

Clearly then Nude 2000 must be remembered for having unfolded a pack of strategies through which artists can enjoy it.

Nude 2001: Female Erotica as Expression

On 17-30 September 2001 Director Mutungi fulfilled his promise on hosting a nude exhibition every year at the Nommo Gallery. 115 artists participated (presenting 185 works). Clearly then, compared to Nude 2000 which attracted 38 artists (presenting 88 works), it is arguable that the success of Nude 2000 sparked off an interest in the production and exhibition of nudity—and this point was made in an article published in Daily Monitor published on 15 September 2001[xiii]

Edris Kisambira wrote a review in The New Vision, in which he characterised works which captured the female nude as alluring, adding that Nude 2012 had some of some of the most graphic expressions of the nude female forms to be ever displayed in Uganda[xiv].

Kisambira further explained why Nude 2001 attracted more artists and artworks. This was because the works exhibited in Nude 2000 were “scooped off the wall so fast”. In other words, and this is how Mutungi was quoted to have seen it, there was lot of “public interest in the subject” of nudity.

Let me point out that the exhibition had more female subjects. It had nude men and children as well. Let me also observe that the message in some of the works was ambiguously expressed.

For instance Benedict Bukenya’s Ripening series and his Stretching lacked clarity. Some works with female nude were not graphic at all. For instance Ibrahim Kamya’s sculptures Untitled and Happy Nude, Norman Koko’s sculpture Maliced, as well as Francis Luyinda’s Suckle on the Move and Lutwama Romano Jr’s Beauty in Nudeness, Kyazze Muwonge’s glass works titled Sublime, Charles Kamya’s Nude, Paul Kitimbo’s Nude, Paul Bazibu’s Blue Love and Ceasar Baba’s Nude Woman.

Other artists stayed away from the controversial subject of the genitals as if to preserve the integrity of the subject. Joshua Agaba’s’s painting Look at Me, Rhami Balyeku’s My Back, Paul Bazibu’s The Butt can be cited as examples. Although based on a nude, these works were not graphic at all. The artists explored material and attended to form, volume and balance, understanding of design, control of the media, colour, picture space, composition, balance and the golden section.

Mutungi explained that like Nude 2000, Nude 2001 was educative. It helped the public “to learn more about the anatomy, the beauty of the body and free the mind from unnecessary misconceptions and to upraise the level of art appreciation in Uganda”.

In line with this stated objective in his painting, titled Comparison, Leopold Higiro presented a soft and feminine female figure juxtaposed against a rough and muscled male figure. The two are set in tableaux to allow the audience to draw the distinction between male and female bodies.

Joseph Mugisha described what happens in a life class: Human beings pose nude. However to show that there is nothing awkward and taboo about it, in his Life Drawing Class he painted nude male students drawing from a nude female model. Wearing a smile, one of the students turns to the beholder and makes a thumbs-up gesture. Mugisha thus demystified the production of nude art while bringing humour into the discussion on the visualisation of nudity. The same can be said of Francis Sseruwu’s Who Cares.

Joseph Mugisha LIFE DRAWING CLASS

Nonetheless there was lot of energy and varied responses seen in the works displayed on the show. This confirmed that the pre-set objective was not restrictive. Artists used it only as a point of departure. They explored and experimented with varied materials (wood, metal, banana fibres, clay, oil, glass, coloured pencil, crayon, charcoal, wash, etc), techniques and styles to unlock their creative potential and artistic expression.

Some even used it as an occasion to celebrate issues of African identity and Uganda’s culture: For instance Yoshi Ishida volarised the identity of the Baganda (a dominant group in Central Uganda) in his Buganda Woman. Jude Kiwekete Kateete in his African Beauty Queen, and Joseph Kizito in his African Treasure, celebrated the identity of an African woman. Rashid Mpenja drew on the decorations, and decorativeness of traditional bead work called endege, to create his Endege series.

Sexuality and eroticism

Now, inaugurated on 16 July 2001 The Red Pepper, in the words of Major General Salim Saleh (President Museveni’s brother), was to publish stories based on controversial subjects: HIV-AIDS, exploitation, etc.[xv] These stories were spiced, or even hyped, by cartoons in which heterosexual couples had sex. Their spaces are identifiably private. For instance the couple in its edition of 18-24 July 2001 The Red Pepper published a cartoon of a couple having sex on a couch under the cover of a blanket.

This link between sex, sexuality, eroticism and the private (and individual) space was clothed with a modicum of decency. This position was taken in the Nude 2001. The women in Joseph Agaba’s Nude Comfort, Rogers Adhola’s Attitude, and Silvester Kibiyira’s Beautiful Enough came from different social classes. They attend to sexuality and eroticism. They however had a significant amount of cloth wrapped around them to ensure that they are socially appropriate.

Joseph Agaba NUDE COMFORT

Silvester Kibiyira BEAUTIFUL ENOUGH

I submit that this is generally an expected from patriarchal societies like Uganda. As they stroked controversy some artists have joined The Red Pepper in the propagation of cultural expectations about sex, sexuality and the human body.

The Red Pepper also circulated pictures of international women celebrities cropped from the internet or the discreetly circulated pornographic magazines. This was possible “Pornography [sold] Big” as it was observed in the Sunday Vision published 30 September 2001; the very a day when Nude 2001 ended. It captured Toni Braxton and Britney Spears in erotic and seductive poses. The mainstream press also sometimes published such images in full colour. To give an example, on 16 September 2001 Daily Monitor published describing her as the hottest pinup in schools[xvi].

This came two days after 14 September 2001 when The New Vision published a photo of Victoria Beckham, singer and wife of football star David Beckham. With her body facing the back she turns her head to face the reader, causing her hair to swirl as she reveals her much celebrated identity, as one of the spice girls, and flair[xvii]. She was described as a “role model” confirming the role of the print and electronic media in forging a ‘global culture’ centred on celebrities-as-role-models. In response phenomena like ‘skin-breaching’, ‘hair extensions’, etc., have become popular among women. Many have health implications. However local industries, like Samona Industries among others, have been established to cater for the growing local market for them. They are sources of revenue and employment.

I contend that the many of the works seen in Nude 2001 had been informed by the celebrities circulated by the internet and print media. They have attributes of fair skin, slender bodies and long hair suggesting that they were not done from any life class or private drawing session.

In fact in our interview with Amanda Tumusiime she confirmed to me that her student James Sonko developed his Nude from a pornography magazine which he also carried to the drawing class[xviii]. This can be verified. In his Nude Sonko depicted a young, supple woman dominating a space. She kneels on a loosely folded fabric allowing her athletic upper body to fall backwards and her sharp breasts to thrust outwards. In a display of flair and style, she holds her thick, long, dark hair as she seductively winks and smile to the beholder. The painting is bathed in a luminous red and yellow colour palette which adds to its vibrancy and vitality. This painting, and two other works exhibited by Sonko, was far removed from the drawings he did out of imagination and the drawing class.

James Ssonko NUDE

Mass-circulation through Red Pepper

The Red Pepper also publicised a new type of dance in which seductive dancers performed in drinking pubs like Will’s Café at Kabalagala, Kiman* zone at Kalerwe (read Kimana “named after the female genitalia”[xix]), Sax Pub on Luwum Street. Groups like the Shadow Angels, the Amarulas, the Queen Dancers Family Group actively performed and promoted this dance called kimansulo. With minimum training girls where guided and encouraged to dance and strip naked allowing their male audience to touch their genitalia, take pictures of it and have sex with them on the stage in front of an audience.

The New Vision reported that taking pictures of the female genitalia became brisk business in suburbs like Kawala Zone, Jambula and Kimombasa[xx]. At Kimombasa, in Bwaise, such sex performances would attract crowds as couples outcompeted each other in what was called “sex competitions”[xxi]. By August The Red Pepper was regularly publishing photographs of couples having sex in all sorts of public places[xxii].

There is an interesting discussion in which Tumsiime (2012, 221-227) has argued that the print media and kimansulo dymstified the naked female body and gave it a public face. It is my opinion that artists contributed to this public face through Nude 2001. The exhibition took nakedness and erotic imagery to the centre of haute couture and mainly high art as it fused the line between high art, low art, public culture and public opinion.

The Red Pepper also mass-circulated sexually explicit images. For example on 8 August 2001 it published a photo of a couple having sex at the veranda of a run-down “pit latrine behind a church”. I admit that this image was sexually explicit and probably offensive if children saw it. Critiques attacked it and related images.

I however strongly argue that critiques must move beyond form to establish the content and context of the material visualised.

In my opinion, The Red Pepper used explicit imagery to raise serious governance, moral and economic issues. This was based on tabloid’s professed belief that “[i]t is exposure that fights evil.” “What a shame!” was the headline accompanying a picture in which a drunken man fondled the genitalia of an equally drunken woman at Sax Pub located at Luwum Street. Using this, and related pictures, the tabloid criticised the deterioration in morals in most parts of Kampala “night clubs and those involved has no regard for other members of the public”[xxiii]. Through what it called “medical briefing” the tabloid advised young people on how to avoid sexually transmitted diseases[xxiv], juvenile sex, drug abuse and other modes of irresponsible behaviour.

This, in my humble estimation, was the message behind the front-page coverage of an incident in which students were taken, for a retreat, to a beach at Entebbe road. While there, students turned to alcoholism, premarital sex and drug abuse. The Red Pepper used the occasion to warn parents against sending their children to end year school parties in the course of which they engaged into immorality and bad behaviour because of lack of supervision and guidance. The article was accompanied graphic images of three juvenile couples having sex.

Unfortunately this context was often missed (it still is). Critiques have attacked it[xxv] suggesting that the sole target of The Red Pepper is profit maximisation. In the words of Pastor Martin Ssempa, The Red Pepper “is just battling to make money…they are simply exploiting the public”[xxvi]. In 2001 one reader harshly criticised and blamed The Red Pepper for having created a forum in which “exposing underwear, nude bodies and obscene actions are unfortunately becoming rampant in the country”[xxvii]. Traditionalists and radical conservatives have called on government to ban the publication.

As a result in October 2001 the Police raided, searched and jailed Richard Tumusiime, the Editor of The Red Pepper[xxviii]. This was part of a well-publicised crackdown, intended to appease the moralists and conservatives, in which so-called prostitutes (or sex-workers) were randomly, arbitrarily and inhumanely arrested, loaded on to trucks and detained[xxix] in defence of morals.

I suspect that Nude 2001 was permeated by this debate. Daniel Birungi did his painting titled Think Twice. He depicted a nude female figure standing in the foreground. She spreads her hands outwards allowing another figure to fondle its breasts. To confirm that the woman before us is not following traditional conventions, she wears a sophisticated coiffure and jewellery.

Daniel Birungi THINK TWICE

The artist seems to advise against some illicit and casual sexual intercourse. As such he introduced other equally nude and non-traditional women into an otherwise calm and (probably) private space. They casually roam around the space in manner which suggest that they are on the loose in such of sexual partners just like the strollers in Sylvia Katende’s On the Streets.

Sylvia Katende ON THE STREETS

Very interestingly Katende seems to suggest in her Satisfied (which, by the way, was also exhibited during Nude 2001) that the women before us have an insatiable libido.

Sylvia Katende SATISFIED

Where they find no man they lie down and spread their legs open while indulging in all forms of autoerotic behaviour. This is how they, probably, can get satisfied. These paintings, just like Lulagala Mawazi’s Through the Walls, were in many ways erotic.

Mawazi Lulagala THROUGH THE WALLS

Intriguingly the artists were not arrested. Although it was hosted just behind the residence of the President of Uganda, the exhibition was not disrupted.

Innocent and inaccessible

This then raises three issues: Firstly, Nude 2001 was seen as a form of artistic expression whose sanctity, as I earlier mentioned, is protected under the Municipal law, the Common law and International law. This is the context in which Ssekisonge argued in Daily Monitor published on 28 September 2001 that “nude must not be offensive…it is about innocence….”[xxx]

Evelyn Kiapi Matsamura encouraged Ugandans to visit the show. There was “no reason to shun the exhibition” she explained. As such the artists and organisers could not have been properly charged under Section 166 of the Penal Code Cap. 120 or indeed any other law.

Indeed Daily Monitor published photographs of works exhibited at the Nommo Gallery. However it could not have been charged under Section 7 of the Electronic Media Act Cap. 104, Section 3 of the Press and Journalist Act Cap. 105 or indeed under the an other Municipal law, the Common Law or International law.

Secondly, the exhibition was not accessible to the masses. It attracted the elite middle class and tourists. In fact a photo published in Daily Monitor of 20 September 2001 captured two men, one wearing a necktie (an attribute of the middle class) inspecting Lwasampijja’s Mystery Woman[xxxi]. In this sculpture the artist represented a blindfolded woman tracing her way through a space. That she is wearing high-heeled shoes confirms her access to non-traditional dress codes. It further confirms that she is an urban woman.

Thirdly, couched in modernist vocabularies of pictorial anatomy and visual vocabulary, Nude 2001 remained inaccessible to the majority of Ugandans who are visually illiterate and can only access the literal meaning available in the photos published in The Red Pepper among others.

Seen in this light one can safely conclude that the exhibition was not a threat to the State and public morals generally. On the contrary it may have been seen to be resolving a more socially relevant.

This strategy of using erotic (but generally female nude) imagery to fight vice can be traced back to the 1980s when Musangogwantamu did his sleep series. For example in Sleep v (1987) Musangogwantamu depicted a woman. She rests against a pillow closing her eyes while holding her breasts and directing her right hand, and the beholder in the process, to her legs which are spread to expose her white panties and allow her to caress her inner thighs. Musangogwantamu’s reference to the autoeroticism of the woman in this work was subtle (Tumusiime 2012) in order to preserve a decorum of modesty. However the work tapped into a wider criticism on the morals of urban non-traditional women. This criticism shaped the songs, theatre and film of the late-eighties; Musango escalated it in his Emptiness of lust (1987).

Musangogwantamu EMPTINESS OF LUST

In Emptiness of lust we see a woman filling the entire picture plane. She closes her eyes and throws her head backwards causing her hair to swirl as she gasps for air. Her body is ruptured by her preoccupation with material things which ooze from her now decomposed body.

In [t]his work the artist presents a moral critique highlighting the folly of overindulgence with the material things (jewellery, shoes, among other things symbolised by improvised objects) and worldly excesses. That this criticism was directed towards women has been rejected as a visualization of the misogyny; the fear of Uganda’s women who, since 1986, have broken chains imposed by tradition and taken up new positions in Uganda’s social, economic and political spheres (cf Tumusiime 2012:163).

In Nude 2001 Apollo Baker did his Still Kawa and For How Long whose gesture, figuration and composition hack back to Musangogwantamu’s Sleep series. Ivan Maganda’s Done and John Matovu’s The Nude Woman point to autoerotic behaviour of middleclass elite (but mainly urban) women seen in Musangogwantamu’s sleep series (Tumusiime 2012).

Apollo Baker STILL KAWA

Apollo Baker FOR HOW LONG

Ivan Maganda DONE

In many of the works the artists used nudity to expose the materialised woman subject who has subverted conventions, traditions and traditional mores. In a patriarchal country struggling to control the woman in the public space, this message was relevant and welcome. This may explain why the artists and the show were not touched.

Exploring the Nude for Art

In summing up, Nude 2001 grew from the success of Nude 2000; the two shows had a common agenda of mystifying the naked body.

I however submit that that is not what is should be remembered for. In my opinion, it should be remembered for providing an occasion of the artists to explore the nude for art and for purposes of contributing to socio-political discussions in the country.

There were few male and child nudes on the show. The majority of artists captured a feminine, young “sharp-breasted”, sexually appealing female nude. This was at a time when serious doubt was being cast on whether “young ‘sharp-breasted’ women [were] still worth the time and money”.

By raising and answering this question Samuel Nsubuga wrote an article in Daily Monitor which was published on 30 September 2001 the day Nude 2001 ended. He submitted that young, sharp-breasted women are not worth the time and money. It was universally accepted that they come with a baggage without bringing added value in terms of sexual satisfaction. In fact it was older women who are better in bed because the sexual performance of a woman improves with age. He however argued that older men still needed ‘sharp-breasted’ women not for sex but to massage their ego and for public opinion.

It is thus my opinion and argument that the circulation of the nude, and mainly the female nude, in Nude 2001, had no sexual intentions however erotic some of the works may have been. Rather, it was for artistic, social and political expression. This is the legacy left behind by Nude 2000 it is the legacy passed on to Nudes 2012 which I attended to in the next section.

The third and final part of this Essay will be published in the January-issue of Startjournal.org.

Download the full essay as PDF (1,2 MB)

Angelo Kakande has researched extensively on contemporary Ugandan art and the connection to politics. He is currently the Head of the Department of Design at MTSIFA.

Endnotes:

Many artists will gush at the opportunity of participating in a group exhibition, especially when it is held in a non-traditional art space like a hotel or an open space. The excitement comes from the fact that they are going to make a good killing with their art. Unfortunately, many times the artists compromise a lot on quality—often the work is not good enough—and as such it affects the whole idea of creativity, competence and innovation.

By Dominic Muwanguzi

A walk into the exhibition hall of the Fairway Hotel, where a group art exhibition is taking place, makes you feel like you are visiting a crafts bazaar. The paintings sit awkwardly on dinner chairs leaning against the back. Some paintings hang grotesquely on the wall; almost hidden by the poor lighting in the hall.

From the art exhibition “Aftermath of Ugandan Art after 50 years” at Fairway Hotel, Kampala, December 2012.

A quick conclusion here is that little thought was put in the presentation of the art works; not to mention the evident poor execution of many paintings on display. The exhibition itself summarily lacks the colorful enthusiasm and elegance that would be expected in a group exhibition in such an upscale venue.

Despite this obtuse display, there are a few art pieces which deserve a nod: Wasswa Katongole and Lukandwa Dominic’s batiks; Yusuf Ngula’s naïve collages dotted with academic notations; Lukwago Saad’s colorful animations; these will all rouse some excitement for many art lovers.

But this kind of exhibition unfortunately does not exist in isolation. There are many such exhibitions featuring on the local art scene here and there. Though some may not be as frivolous as the above-mentioned, they all seem to follow a particular trend where artists from a particular studio gather and stage a group exhibition with intent of “working together”.

The exhibition “The aftermath of Ugandan art after 50 years” taking place at the Fairway Hotel seemed to have been dominated by artists from Njovu Art Studio.

Brought together by a theme

MishMash in Kololo has been a brainchild of many such exhibitions. Every month this establishment has a group of artists teaming together to put on a show. Sometimes the artists originates from a particular studio; on other occasions, the management and artists will come up with a theme and work round that.

In all this, MishMash is trying to help the artist to be creative and innovative, but also to be relevant to the tastes and preferences of the clientele. This is a worthy idea, especially since it is being guided by a curator (MishMash hitherto has acquired a curator to polish up what they put on display for all of us art lovers).

From the MishMash Gallery, Kampala, 2012. Artwork by Collin Sekajugo.

Nevertheless, one should question the frequency of these group exhibitions. If MishMash has a group exhibition every month, does this provide adequate time for the artist to think and create?

According to visual artist Collin Sekajugo, the idea of group exhibitions is a brilliant idea since it encourages competence and innovation.

“The good artist will always try to stand out in a group exhibition,” he says.

Competence and innovations are very good products for the real development of art. However, they could be compromised on when a group exhibition is held in commercial establishment like a hotel.

Art as promotional tool

Such non-traditional art spaces are often looking for ways to promote their spaces and may have little priority to encourage competence and innovation among the artists. Nevertheless, corporate companies like Fireworks Advertising Agency are eager to promote artists and their works.

Their annual art exhibition hinges on a mission of linking artists to business people who have the financial muscle to purchase local art.

From the Fireworks Annual Art Exhibition at Kabira Country Club, Kampala, December 2012. Photo by courtesy of Fireworks Advertising Agency.

Fireworks has now succeeded on some levels since a bulk of the work put on display in their exhibitions has been bought by business men and local art collectors. The agency should also be lauded for their careful presentation of work as they have worked with recognized art organizations like KART and Uganda Visual Artists and Designers Association.

Despite this euphoria, questions abound how artists and organizers balance the issue of quality and price during such collaborative exhibitions.

The survival syndrome

There has been an outcry from the traditional art spaces that the price vis-à-vis quality of art at these corporately organized group exhibitions sometimes is below what is expected.

For example, at the Fairway hotel exhibition an art piece by Yusuf Ngula that could fetch a couple of hundred dollars at either Afriart gallery or AKA gallery , was priced at 200 dollars. Conversely, Umoja Art gallery group exhibition “Living Masters 2” features miniatures from artists like Kigozi, Mugalu, Kyeyune, Godfrey and Jude Kateete. Each of these miniatures which measure 18 by 18 centimetres goes for $100.

However, some critics argue that the price of $100 is dismal for these pieces given the quality of the work and the type of artist exhibiting.

From the art exhibition “Living Masters II (Miniatures” at the Umoja Art Gallery, Kampala, December 2012.

The crux of the matter here is that many such exhibitions have an underlying commercial motive and not to foster creativity, competence and innovation among artists. Because of such motive, it comes as no surprise when each of these art exhibitions is tagged with a charity project. An undisclosed percentage of each piece sold is given to a certain charity home; to save orphans or support AIDS victims and much more.

The Mishmash gallery, Signature Art exhibition, Fireworks Annual Art Exhibtion have in the recent past been victims to this trend.

More so, smart artists and organizers have come to discover that group exhibitions sell more than one-man shows. This, however, depends on the targeted audience, quality of work on display and the level of publicity.

“It’s a dilemma for the artist and the organizers given the complex situation of today’s troubled economy,” says Sekajugo.

Indeed, it is a complex situation. Artists need to survive in an industry that has a handful of clientele—generally tourists and expatriates—not to mention the brutal reality of today’s troubled economy.

From the art exhibition “10 years of art excellence” at Afriart Gallery, Kampala, December 2012.

Which way forward

Nevertheless, artists and art organizers need to create a clear-cut program on how they operate and what is their agenda when they hold such exhibitions.

As I pen this article, there is a group exhibition taking place in every art space in Kampala. This crash in program symbolizes the lack of good organization in the local art scene whereby you find the same names of artists exhibiting in two or more art spaces at the same time.

From the art exhibition “December Paintings” at AKA Gallery, Kampala, December 2012.

Contrary to the above, the mishmash element (excuse the pun) which characterizes many such exhibitions is not healthy for the growth of the industry. Group exhibitions should be organized with a defined agenda. Is it about charity; is it to foster creativity, competence and innovation, or is it essentially to make money.

This kind of organization will help to professionalize the industry and also help artists be more focused as they prepare for such collaborative exercises.

In the quest for such tangible professional ethics, art spaces and art organizers need to partner with credible art institutions like 32° East, which can help in the mentoring of good curatorship, documentation and nurturing of artists.

Though such partnership can be interpreted as expensive in terms of finance and time, their overall outcome will not only benefit the art spaces in terms of improving the quality of work put up in their respective spaces, but it will also expose the artist to a more mature approach to their craft. Hence, we will be saved from the gross presentation of art at many such collaborative exhibitions.

Dominic Muwanguzi is a freelance art Journalist with a strong dedication to uplifting the visual arts in Uganda.

Henry Mzili Mujunga

I first met Ssalongo Joseph Matovu at Nommo gallery in 2000 at a time when Gregory Robison, a British printmaker, was activating print making in Uganda. Joseph Matovu (JM as he signs his prints) struck me as a vibrant stout man in his early50s whose black bow tie on a white short sleeved shirt and khaki trousers made him look neat and accomplished. He told me then that he had just come back from South Africa where he had been training teachers at Thaba Nchu Teachers’ College in Orange Free State, then a Bantustan. He also informed me he had had a seven year stint at Machakos Teachers’ College in Kenya. An accomplished man he was indeed, to confirm my suspicions.

The artist, Ssalongo Joseph Matovu, Portrait. Image courtesy of Henry Mzili Mujunga

One thing that stood out in our conversation was his love of art, especially printmaking, and his admiration of fellow Ugandan Nairobi exiles; Expedito Mwebe, Nuwa Nyanzi, Jak Katalikawe, Henry Lumu, Wasswa Katongole, et al. I also had the privilege to view some of his prints many of which were reproductions of his earlier works done in the 80s. I thought, wow, here is a man with a history in Ugandan art and the ambition to match.

Subsequently, I bumped into him on several occasions perusing the streets of Kampala in search of subject matter. He was always sketching, oblivious of the stares he attracted from idlers and passersby. At one point I thought he was loony given the way he was dressed; which to be honest, was in sharp contrast with my earlier image of him. I would also catch him at the numerous Exhibition openings in town keeping a low profile among the pretentious crowds that frequent such events. Then he faded into oblivion.

Fast forward to 2015, I got a call from him addressing me as professor; a title I thought was only preserved for the likes of him. He wanted me to visit his studio to review his ‘latest things’, as the popular saying goes. We made an appointment to meet at Rubaga cathedral at 11 am. Like the polished man he still was, he kept time to the second. Upon reaching his studio, he showed me his new woodcuts which I admired for their rich strokes and simple clear images. Nonetheless I chastised him for having not increased on the size of his format since we last met. I also wondered why he had not moved away from typical imagery of women plaiting hair, boda-boda cyclists, bare landscapes and birds which have dominated his work since the 80s.He was quick to point out that his work style had been shaped by his days in self exile.

The artist displays art work on rugged Landscape “memories of Thaba Nchu. Image courtesy of Henry Mzili Mujunga

Whereas in Kenya he was able to interact openly with other artists, even showing work in private galleries like Watatu, segregated South Africa was a more restrictive environment. He found himself mostly confined to his immediate environment where he kept to himself and worked within the reaches of his senses. Most of the artworks of landscapes he made were reflection of the ragged sceneries around the college. He said they reminded him of the works of English landscape artists John Constable and William Turner that he had studied in Makerere Art School in the early 70s. Most of the work done at this time was experiments involving collage and woodcut prints. Apparently he did not pursue these beyond a few works despite urging from the Sculptor Francis Nnagenda. When he returned to Kampala, he instinctively delved into scenes of cyclists, women hanging clothes, sketching the birds which hoped around his yard and capturing idlers and merchants in the busy Kampala streets. In fact his work is a more minimalist interpretation of George Kyeyune’s expressionist paintings of the same.

Having not really perceived his accomplishments as an older generation artist, I quizzed him farther about his growth as an artist. I nonchalantly suggested that he seemed to be overly comfortable in his particular style of work to which he agreed. In explanation JM intimated that he would not dare put hand to sketch unless he was activated emotionally (read moved) by events.

“As students we were always advised to work under ecstasy,” said he.

JM asserts that he has discovered himself in art and is comforted by the fact that his work is appreciated by accomplished artists and art collectors as well as house maids. He said he gets good feedback from whoever sees his woodcuts. His most fluid communication is the black and white woodcuts with expressive strokes. He uses colour in its brilliant primary form without much attempt at chromatic sophistication. The simple images, symmetry and brilliant palette make his work achieve a pop art feel to it.

The artist sketching in his studio. Image courtesy of Henry Mzili Mujunga

So the big question is why Joseph Matovu’s work isn’t being sought after by major galleries and collectors globally. Is it a case of poor self promotion or lack of clear channels for the growth and development of art and artists in Uganda?

The artist can be contacted at josephmatovu20@gmail.com or mobile +256 774956109.

The author is an eclectic artist who enjoys making Afrobeat music and listening to it. He is also part of the Indigenous Expression movement and a Pan Africanist.

By George Kyeyune

In 2013, I won a coveted Fulbright Fellowship to spend the winter semester at Emory University, USA. I shared my excitement with my PhD supervisor, (1999-2003) Prof. John Picton. I told him that Professor Sidney Kasfir was going to be my mentor and John’s remark was, ‘you are very lucky because Sidney is a very intelligent and devoted scholar.’ A talented and prolific scholar of African Art, Sidney was John’s first PhD student when he was recruited to teach History of African Art at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London in the early 1980s. Relatedly, I was one of John’s last PhD students before his retirement in 2004, while my 2013 Fulbright Fellowship at Emory was also Sidney’s year of retirement.

I had read many of Sidney’s publications, many of which were focusing on East Africa. Still, it was a different feeling sitting in her seminar classes for graduate students at Emory. I experienced a remarkable learner-centred professor, very methodical and with a high sense of organisation. I took that very seriously. She nurtured a spirit of free-thinking and independence. I had earlier sensed that in her PhD student, Sunanda Sanyal (1998), at the Margaret Trowell School of Industrial and Fine Arts (MTSIFA), Makerere University, when he came for his field research. Sunanda’s PhD, Imaging Art, Making History: Two Generations of Makerere Artists, 2000, inspired many, if not all, the PhDs at MTSIFA that proliferated after the millennium. The Mujaju Report threat (2000) that a PhD was mandatory for anyone who dreamt of teaching and promotion at Makerere University had created anxiety and panic for the academic staff.

Sidney’s love for Uganda and its art was insatiable, and Nommo Gallery was her window into the visual landscape of Uganda. She was director of Nommo Gallery for a couple of years in the late 1960s. Like Mrs Margaret Trowell, the founder of Makerere Art School, Sidney knew that much as Uganda did not inherit a rich legacy of figurative art comparable to that of Congo and other parts of Africa, its art comprising of ornamental arts, pottery, weaving, myths and legends was not inferior. It was common for early scholars in African Art History to judge East Africa as less creative because of its plastic art ‘desert,’ among other reasons. Interestingly, ‘traditional art’ in its entirety, was not favoured by Cecil Todd, Trowell’s successor, as potential resources for modern art. Sidney took it on herself to elevate the ‘traditional’ arts and promoted them in Nommo Gallery, treating them as a critical part of East Africa’s inheritance of significant value. She showed such art traditions as the Tinga Tinga which, up to now, has remained impervious to modern academic influence that Todd pushed in the 60s. She also showed informally trained and ‘naïve’ artists such as Jak Katarikawe (painter) and Richard Ndabagoye (printmaker). This liberal approach to art consumption and display permitted an art experience in Uganda which was wide-ranging and inclusive.

Sidney’s new husband, Kirati Lenaronkoito, a Samburu in Kenya, made it possible for her to cross the border and visit Uganda regularly. She had close friends at MTSIFA which included Rose Kirumira, with whom she wrote a chapter in African Art and Agency in the Workshop, a book she edited. Uganda was her second home, and whenever she wrote about contemporary African Art, Uganda was always close to her mind. Her article Up Close and Far Away: Re-narrating Buganda’s Troubled Past published in African Arts Journal (Autumn 2012), reveals her deep interest and understanding of Uganda’s past and its influence on the contemporary artist.

Sidney was a generous and selfless scholar, who was always keen to develop the discipline of African Art by sharing her knowledge with the young generation. Whenever possible, she gave lectures to students and staff of MTSIFA many of whom, only came to appreciate her depth of knowledge and relevance to them when they themselves embarked on their PhD programs.

We are indebted to her.

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