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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Category: Visual Art
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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In this second part of a three-part essay, Angelo Kakende reviews many of the paintings depicted in Nude 2000 and Nude 2001: “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.”
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The Uganda Press Photo Award (UPPA) ceremony, held November 8th, gave a unique platform to tell a multitude of stories through photographs, in doing so changing the role of photojournalism to both viewers and participants. Serubiri Moses reviews the exhibition and writes about the practice of photojournalism.
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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.
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Winning an award at a big fashion show like the Vancouver Fashion Week can be a daunting task. More so if you are little known at home, barely in your thirties and your siblings think you are nothing more than a tailor. By far, his claim to being known locally as a fashion designer was a small stint at the Bayimba International Festival 2010 where his collection came out as the best. This is Ras Kasozi’s road to international fame, and it started humbly.
Read More >>In this first part of a three-part essay, Angelo Kakende relates the recent Nude 2012-exhibition at FasFas to former Nude 2000 and Nude 2001-exhibitions held at Nommo Gallery. He looks beyond the claim for the aesthetic appeal, and attends two ways in which the production and circulation of the nude in contemporary Ugandan art in general and nude exhibitions in particular fuses the line between aesthetics and pornography; art and non-art.
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“It had never occurred to me that setting up twelve shipping containers across the city could account for a festival, but it certainly did when the shipping containers were translated into art exhibition points. This was the Kampala Contemporary Art Festival dubbed ‘12 artists, 12 locations’ and it ran from 7th-14th October with a theme ‘12 Boxes Moving’.” Elizabeth Namakula reviews.
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The monument “The Journey” was unveiled at the Kololo airstrip during then celebration of the 50 years of independence. The five youthful individuals represent the five decades Uganda has passed through as an independent state. Nakisanze Segawa looks at this one and some of the most significant monuments that represent Uganda’s past and the future.
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“The series in this collection are meant to inspire Ugandans and well-wishers to think about giving a woman the opportunity to attend to Uganda’s problems for at least five years come 2016 in order for Uganda to recuperate as well as inspire the upcoming artists to have a new approach to depicting women in their artwork so that we give the women the kind of dignity they most deserve.” Visual artist Fred Mutebi writes for startjournal.
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Renowned Batik artist Nuwa Wamala Nnyanzi has visited the Western Michigan University and writes for startjournal about his journey: “Our discussion touched so many areas of mutual interest. Applied art, the role of art in community development, art therapy, graphic design, textile art—especially batik—and a host of others. The discussion also touches on the centuries old debate of what is and what is not art? We seem to agree that art is best described and appreciated in a cultural context.”
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September 19-October 14, 2012, Kampala Railway Station Gardens
This project includes an itinerant urban exhibition of contemporary African artistic practices, residencies for African artists, and workshops on the relation between art and the development of modern urban centres in Africa. One of its aims is to highlight the importance of culture and creativity as development tools. This initiative is part of the strategic partnership between the EU and the African Union.
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“Having attended the same university and only separated by a handful of years; having exhibited in nearly the same galleries and influenced by the same patronage system, this pair comes across as archetypal artistic bedfellows. They seem to have suckled from the same breast of contemporary art awareness and their styles are scarcely singular.” Nathan Kiwere reviews Daudimzili for Startjournal.
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Is good art the art that sells the most? What about madness? Is it an ingredient of great art? How about art donors? These ideas all made up the WAZO Talking Arts edition of July, led by a paper on the subject of Immoral Courage by Henry Mzili Mujunga.
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Is it Art or Wolokoso? was the theme of Ronex’s art exhibition of 10 Years, questioning a fundamental theory that Ugandans do not “get” art. By the end of the four staged exhibits in four galleries, each two weeks apart, several of the showgoers agreed gleefully that what they had experienced was indeed, art. Serubiri Moses reviews for Startjournal.
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Perhaps one day Ugandan artists and citizens will honor Maloba and his vision by reappropriating Independence Monument from its current appropriation, even theft, by the NRM as a rallying place for reflection on the 50 years of betrayals of the original promise of independence. Armed with the social media that Ugandan artists utilize so effectively, they may give birth to a new generation of promise to transform Uganda. What will their monuments, the monuments for the next 50 years of independence, look like?
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Chris Mugarura is a Ugandan comics artist, striving hard to enrich the comics industry and trying to change people’s stereotypical perceptions towards comics. He believes he can do this through his masterful comics skills and compilations.
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Ugandan visual artists want to help the slum-dwelling communities of Kampala to express their views artistically. Through creative media like painting, sculpture and printmaking the artists hope to start a dialogue on issues that affect the communities. Nathan Kiwere of the Uganda Visual Artists Association explains the slum art project.
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Felix Magima confronts two important, though rarely addressed, subjects in his recent exhibition at the AKA Gallery; women and religion. As his artworks speak, they often wade into taboo territories, therefore observing a new place, rarely approached by visual artists in Uganda. His new paintings “scream out” for freedom for women and the poor enslaved by religious commercialism. Serubiri Moses reviews for Startjournal.
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On 17th April 2012, in Doha, Bruno Ruganzu was announced winner of the TEDx competition TED Prize for City 2.0 at the TEDx Summit in Qatar. City 2.0 is about creating ideas that can change your city. Innovation, education, culture and economic opportunity were its key fundamentals. Among the five finalists from Egypt, Canada, South Africa and Pakistani, Bruno had only two minutes to raise the Ugandan flag high.
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