Hidden Beauty 2022
As part of the Moving Identities Festival in May 2022, the Alliance Française de Kampala and the Goethe Zentrum Kampala/ UGCS joined forces to organise a three-day painting workshop in the Nakivale refugee camp. During this workshop, the refugees were accompanied by two painters to create their paintings. The aim of this exhibition is to show another image of the people living in refugee camps. These works tell stories of family, courage and struggle, which are sublimated by the artist’s practice. This exhibition allows us to see how we can change our history through art. Most of the artists were painting their own stories. This workshop was also aimed to give them hope that they can do something with their talent and they may be able to make a living from their art.
The Passport Exhibition
The passport exhibition explores the plight of young people especially girls; looking for green pastures out of their countries and end up in the snares of human trafficking. Human trafficking in Uganda and across the world is a vice that is going on and is hardly given enough attention. Artists; Katesi Jacqueline and Kasirisimbi Tadeo through their works share the stories, plight and experiences of this trade and its victims. Human trafficking especially child trafficking in Uganda has been significantly griming; organized through unofficial networks of relatives, friend, neighbors, parents and village mates even though total strangers are also involved in the practice. Recent report by Save the Children in 2006 and ILO /IPEC, 2007 have shown that this heinous crime is still going on behind our doors and many people appear to be Un-informed about the extent of the Vice. There is no doubt that children, women and young men are trafficked for various reasons and many are involved in hazardous forms of labor including commercial sex, domestic labor, commercial agriculture, fishing, mining, armed conflict, drug trafficking and urban informal sector. Some are trafficked under the guise of better jobs in other countries. Through the exhibition, the artistes aim at creating Awareness/ Sensitizing the public about the vice of human trafficking which is next door to all of us and create dialogue around the subject.
Friend Request
The digital has offered opportunity for exchanges and interaction amongst individuals. The level of connectivity, the globe has right now; is unprecedented and the transfer of knowledge and experiences has never had better tools and with that the hunger to reconnect to ancestries and origins has intensified. In Remmy Sserwadda’s work individual identities separated and spliced by histories and geographies seek to unite in ways that are not only digital, because that is too ephemeral, Remmy imagines a homecoming message, a sort of restitution. This desire for the repatriation of the African diaspora may be in conflict with globalist worldviews of international citizenry, but Remmy feels that if this worldview as it is has no place for the African (as recent events have continued to demonstrate outright exclusion and hate) then they should return back “home”. This perspective is not yet fully fleshed out maybe very problematic, but if Africa is not entirely a persuasive and viable option for the black body then where is/will be? Remmy’s friend request comes with this note: So here I am reaching out to the hopeless and faithless To the faint hearted and broken To the victims of racism To the lonely and the vagabond. The sick and the confused, And to the lost souls of African descent from all corners of the world, To any African reading we are Africa and Africa is here for you