Friday, 6 Dec 2024
Year: 2013

From FasFas Art Café, Kampala, 2012.

Nudity? It is Artistic Expression and Free Speech (part III)

In this third and final part of a three-part essay, Angelo Kakende reviews the recent Nude 2012-exhibition at FasFas: “Nudes 2012 was different from Nude 2000, Nude 2001… It was mobilised with local resources and initiatives. This created the burden of the need to sell and recover costs. In my opinion, it is this economic incentive which affected the positions the artists took while. They treaded carefully avoiding the risk of offending anyone.”

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

When group exhibitions fall short on competence and innovation

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.

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Maurice Kirya. Photo by courtesy of Maurice Kirya's Facebook-page.

The Book of Kirya: Songs written in the future about the past

Iwaya reviews the latest Murica Kirya-album “The Book of Kirya” for startjournal.org. “More than anything else, Book of Kirya is about helping others. If Misubbaawa was about lighting the candle, Book is about demonstrating to the whole world of onlookers that the light has not gone out. It is still shinning, bringing light, and if you bring your light, like Kirya is trying, like in Mulembe gwa Kirya, this light can become a fire, a blaze, an unstoppable inferno.”

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Lantern Meet of Poets: "'Broken Voices of the Revolution', National Teatre, 2012.

Museveni’s children and their splintered voices in ‘Broken Voices of the Revolution’

The Lantern Meet of Poets is made up of mostly university students who share one thing in common. They were born in the 1980’s—at the time when the National Resistance Army (NRA), now the National Resistance Movement (NRM), allegedly liberated this country from bad governance. During this first themed recital and performance, they sounded out their splintered voices from within the revolution. The writing, though familiarly presented, managed to achieve a simmering hyper-realism in the audience.

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