by Matt Kayem As I am scrolling through my Instagram as usual, my eyes rest on a predominantly black and white poster for an open studio on Afriart Gallery’s page. It’s a new artist! I nod in agreement of the
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Category: Review
Promiscuous dark charcoal scribbles and smudges coupled with a few sporadic pastel and acrylic paint highlights here and there is what it’s like. From a distance the artwork is puzzling to the eye. It practically looks messy, unplanned and mysterious. On the surface, one may even equate it to a 5-year old’s random playtime creation.
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By Lara Buchmann Henry Mujunga aka Mzili is a legend in the local art scene of Kampala. Having attended Makerere Art School from 1993 to 1995, some of the great modernists[1] of Uganda’s post-independence period have been his teachers or
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Kaleab Abate’s print works usher us into a complicated space of existence between comfort and distress. The Ethiopian artist who is based in Addis Ababa had his first open studio session in October 2021, after attending a three-month long artist residency in Kampala, Uganda.
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Kla Art is finally back this year. The bi-annual art festival, which was supposed to take place in August 2020, was postponed to this year and who is not happy to finally see art in the public within this dusty city? Artist and art writer Matt Kayem visited most of the installations around town and gives you his view on each of them.
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Covid-19 all caught us all by surprise. Ugandan contemporary artist Matt Kayem had just arrived in Lusaka, Zambia for his art is residency at Modzi Arts when borders closed and there was no return back to his beloved motherland. Trevor Mukholi talks to the artist on phone.
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Lack of funding and the ‘strings attached’ to donor funding scenarios continue to be-devil many creative projects by artists in the local communities. It is one thing to have a brilliant idea on paper and another altogether to be able to execute it as a result of the financial constraints or because of creativity being compromised by the many donor requirements. Dominic Muwanguzi attends an info session of Kuonyesha Arts Fund, that promises financial empowerment in the sector.
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Who has the right to make an “African film”? Can filmmakers who do not originate from the continent make such films that reference the continent? Who decides this? This an many more questions were raised during a conversation between Samuel Lutaaya Tebandeke (Ugandan filmmaker) and David Cecil (British producer) on British-Ugandan production Imperial Blue.
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There has been a raging discussion on the curatorial practice for the Kampala Art Biennale (KAB18) undertaken by internationally renowned curator, Simon Njami, on social media and international art platforms. The conversation emerged in the aftermath of the biennale with online art publications publishing a series of articles by international writers. Art Journalist Dominic Muwanguzi gives his opinion on the issue from a local perspective.
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Artist Fred Mutebi advocates for reviving the indigenous art forms. He is embarking on a new project using printmaking on 100% bark-cloth paper as an alternative surface. “Let us join our minds to strengthen Ugandan bark-cloth resumption by moving it from tradition to economics. The remaining elderly bark-cloth artisans need our support in their struggle of passing on skills to the youth.”
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During the Opening performance of ChomboTrope , the Jitta collective by Kefa Oiro and Stephanie Thiersch yesterday at OneTen on Seventh, it was clear that they had used their creation process to deliver a strong sense of agency with shared ownership and ‘authenticity’.
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Canon should be described as an artist before a photographer. From both his art and being in his company it is undeniable that he is one of the most uncompromising people I have ever met. Attempting to present Canon has proven to be the most challenging part of a longer study on Kampala’s urban photographers and artists and I feel that it is necessary to disclaim the highly subjective nature of my attempts to do so. – By Alex L. Rogerson
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“Why should an artist live and die as a pauper? Why would an artist be harshly criticized for making a living out of their gift? Why should an artist want to shift the laws of living? Why should artists not stand tall and say they want to be successful and rich?” These are the questions Matt Kayem asks himself.
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By Martha Kazungu “Ubuntu is the missing link in the arts here in Uganda, the reason we are growing too slow! Both visual and performing arts. Some of us can’t even share an art brush.” – Derrick Komakech, Ugandan artist The
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By Erika Holum Ife Piankhi is a recent artist in residence at 32° East | Ugandan Arts Trust. Working as a performance artist, singer, poet, and creative facilitator for over 30 years, Ife has recently ventured into a creative practice
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By Kalungi Kabuye Before Queen of Katwe, Mira Nair was probably better known as the director of the 1988 film Salaam Bombay, which was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. In Uganda we first knew her
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This issue demonstrates that the available archive of the history of Uganda’s visual culture is still rich, accessible and usable. However, it could shape a conversation on the country’s creative discourse if (and only if) we looked at it again and looked at it hard enough. Dr. Angello Kakande gives an overview of the articles in this Feb – May 2017 Issue.
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By Martha Kazungu. In August 2016, during a meeting where I was invited to be part of the team to share ideas on how to re-establish and run the Start Art journal, artist Margaret Nagawa, who is also the pioneering person in the effort to revamp Start Art Journal, suggested to me to develop a short narrative essay talking about my role as Curatorial Assistant in the 2016 Kampala Art Biennale.
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By Philip Balimunsi. This article summaries the experience of audiences to the Dads exhibition and their general response collected through comments. Further still the article seeks to analyse the exhibition development process and the reaction of viewers in relation to the topic of positive masculinity. Providing a platform to future festival visual conversations, the photography exhibition idea was developed between Bayimba International Festival of the arts and the Swedish Embassy in Kampala to contribute to the greater festival conversation of 2016.
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By Samuel Kiwanuka The Kampala contemporary art scene is increasingly becoming exciting. Artists’ niche to experiment and innovate with new media now facilitates them to convey different forms of visual narratives to their audiences through interaction with the artwork. By
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