KLA ART celebrates local art in public spaces, taking art from the galleries into the streets of the city. It’s an art festival that reaches non-traditional art audiences and gives participating contemporary artists new experiences of production and a unique platform for their work. KLA ART is produced by 32 East, an organization for the creation and exploration of Ugandan contemporary art.
Maasai Mbili
Title: ya Tola
We all know the market space but what happens behind the first layer of engagement? How do we get past our assumptions about the market spaces that define our city to understand the economics, lived experiences and living situations of, what one could argue, is central to our larger economies?
This is a remake of an installation and performance piece first shown at Kuona Trust, Centre of visual arts in Kenya. A reconstruction of two-roomed temporary tenements which serve both as business places and sleeping quarters for the residents. Most of the businesses are illegal and the residents build their own rules of engagement. A vibrant sub-culture exists despite the simplicity of their lives. The interior of each room serves as a diorama of ordinary life close to the market. On simple tv screens is screened archival footage from daily life within the area.
Nabukenya Hellen
Title: Munno Mu Kabi
Watch this piece come to life and be made during the festival. Down in the heart of Kampala city is a place famously named Kiyembe, after the trees that surrounded it.
Many years ago this area, currently occupied by sprawling modern buildings, was a hub of activity of mostly locals who dealt in tailoring, sewing, ironing and cloth works. Their main source of shelter and shade was a large mango tree under whose canopy they plied their trade. Hellen has been working in this area for years to make large-scale installation pieces.
Throughout July and August, Hellen will finally be able to make work within Kiyembe, using the cloth offcuts, usually sent to the rubbish dump, to make ropes and clothes to create a large tapestry and narrative.. Through this process she will also pass on basic craft skills that you can enjoy too! And enjoy the chance to fraternize and bond just like in old Kiyembe days.
Darlyne Komukama
Title: Rage
Come scream with us! Darlyne’s installation is a room for the femmes of Kampala to rage in. Scream, shout, punch, laugh, cry or be in silence. This box will offer itself as a space for you to go off the record for a precious second. As a woman in the city, Darlyne feels that her rage is silenced, made off the record. So she’s providing a safe space for women to express themselves, heard or not and photographed or not before and after their moment of expression.
Timothy Wandulu
Title: Modern Intellects
“Nobody wants a smoking stove” – fuel is lost even when it doesn’t burn.
It is from this point of view that Wandulu sees his life and generation- the fuel that the young energetic generation has in most communities goes to waste as it’s not harnessed to fuel their countries’ development.
Insidiously, Wandulu will place models and stoves on the streets of Kampala – watch closely and be sure not to miss. This will all come together in a live street performance and short video interviews and an installation to continue to be engaged with after the performance.
How are our youth hidden in such plain site? What is being done to harness what they have to offer? Offer your comments during the performance and with the #OffTheRecord
Karis Upton
Title: The Red Files
Who and what has gone missing in Uganda?
Since we became a country, missing persons and missing files/information have shaped how we have access to our history, to our national identity, ourselves as people. Karis Upton has been studying the “migrated” ‘Uganda Pre- Independence’ and ‘Operation Legacy’ from the British National Archive.
She is using these as jumping-off points to create and short film and installation which looks at absence, the psychological effects of loss, recovering cultural and personal histories and the importance of accessible ‘records of truth’ for collective memories and future generations.
Graffiti Crew
Stories on Walls | Mural Project of Kampala
Four graffiti artists will come together to make the streets of Kampala alive this August. They want to make our city more beautiful, get your attention, the city’s attention and KCCA’s attention to put underserved communities back on the radar. Through working in Katanga slum, they will be putting up graffiti tours and murals with the people they’ve already developed a relationship with.
William Kane Olwit
Title: Masks
Masks is a photography project about the different masks we wear, lies we tell ourselves, personas and narratives we employ in our daily lives in order to create a facade that is acceptable to society.
Williams’ photo booth will be a space for you to share false beliefs , personal narrative, persona that you feel you have to project to the world. These words and feelings will be projected directly onto you for a photo, later shared in an online gallery and shared back to you.
Christine Ayo
Title: Voicing Entebbe
Voicing Entebbe is an act of art and activism. In 2017 23 women in Entebbe, were infamously raped and murdered. What happened to them? When does justice come? How do we document their lost lives?
Voicing Entebbe started as a personal archive dedicated to documenting these tragedies, cases that still remain unsolved. Christine, together with artists Ife Piankhi and Daisy Aloyo (Entebbe Division B Speaker) will work with women in Entebbe to collectively build a monument/public piece in The Mayor’s Garden commemorating these lost lives. Through process and product, this project will encourage dialogue about critical issues, using art as e a medium for spreading feminism within communities that urgently need it. Development on this project can be seen on the Voicing Entebbe Website.
Dilman Dila
Title: Robots of the Pearl
Robots, cyborgs, augmented reality are part of our future, or are they? Dilman Dila will be bringing them to Kampala this August.
Using these new technologies, Dilman’s project asks if we aren’t already living in the future. If Ugandan traditional surgeons performed successful C-sections before anyone in the westerns world, in 2018 and our medical systems are we moving forward or drifting backwards? And how come these triumphs aren’t celebrated? Using augmented and virtual realities, Dilman Dila will place robots, androids and the sci-fi fantastic in ancient and current tableus. Using traditional science, surgeries, healing and medicine as a jumping off point Dilman’s work questions time, what we percieve as reality and possibility, specific to Uganda.
Jared Onyango
Title: Jua Kali Pedestrian
Every day we walk up and down the streets of Kampala, yet the evidence of us on these paths disappears as quickly as our foot leaves the pavement. How do you move through your city and how does the city see you?
Jared is contemporary dancer, of Body in a Box, and multi-media installation artist who is going to address this question. His three-part piece Jua Kali Pedestrian will collect record of our everyday movement through large scroll and paint – this time your footstep will not just disappear but be remembered on this scroll indefinitely. To compliment this, he will conduct interviews to be included in a short video piece and finally a step/walk dance performance to share with audiences the stories he has collected over time. This city was built – but with what intention and for who? This city is used – but when how and why? The street is a witness, the street holds stories and Jared wants to collect them with you.
With most of Kampala’s traffic in the city actually moving on foot, alleyways and small passages are key to our lives in the city. Kampala Road, a bustling centre of knock off-phones, delicious food and endless bodies moving up and down searching for sente, connects to many others. Join us in Marvin’s Phone services alleyway between Kampala road and Wilson road for a fresh way to experience the city and the exhibition of some of our artists’ work.
The Uganda Museum was set up in the early 20th century and moved over the years from Lugard’s Ford in Old Kampala, to Makerere University and landed on its current site along Kira Road in the 1950s. Museums are always set up from a certain vantage point in which, ideas – political, cultural, narrative and otherwise – shape decisions around what is worth showing and how to show it. The current displays of the museum hold a load of information and point to such political ideas and how they developed over time.
An initially temporary structure that has now lasted over 100 years, Nakasero Market may be most honest and quintessential love-letter to and about Kampala.
The market was started in 1895, at first at the Lubiri. In 1905, Nakasero Market moved to Kagugube which was initially a temporary structure, where it has been shaping lives, collecting stories and becoming a central part of the city since. Nakasero market doesn’t just represent the city, but has also shaped it and holds much of Kampala’s history in its life.
Kiyembe road takes its name from the trees that used to surround it. Under these trees tailors and others would make for their customers, with each other and eventually built a sense of community in this shared space. Over time, trees have made way for multi-floor buildings, and now only the shade from falls on the tables of those working below. It is a place of commerce, once also a place of community, right in the heart of our city.
One could argue that informal settlements are a direct, progressional and improvised response of citizens to their city and their needs. Why they are they surpressed, underserved and kept off important official records? Impossible to ignore. Katanga is home to a wide range of people whose need for real infrastructure continue to grow.
Some of our graffiti crew artists have been working with Katanga to understand how they want to see their neighborhood grow, and how beautification of their places has immediate impact on the quality of their lives. Katanga itself is located between Mulago Hospital and Makerere University, both who claim that this huge swampy chunk of land is theirs, turning it effectively into no-man’s land.
For every front-facing building in Kampala, there seems to be an other secret, hidden place behind it where people make business and lives together.
This August, we found a particularly special one – a three storey high secret courtyard with beautiful street lamps and a small collection of uniquely curious statues inside it. This is the home of our opening night. Located on the corner of Kampala Road and Station Approach, right outside the train station in the city. You would never guess that you’ve walked by this slice of beauty every day without seeing it peak out at you behind an inconspicuous chicken-joint.
Ham Mukasa is “The scholar who never went to school”. A maverick in his own right, he shaped Uganda’s history at a critical time that the British were entering. Unknown to many in Kampala, his family still preserved his house in Kampala, just off Kabaka Njagala Road. With it’s large balcony, huge beautiful garden and original furniture from Ham Mukasa’s days in the early 1900s, it’s hard to believe that such a historical gem is right in the middle of our city.
32° Degrees East, through KLA ART, British Institute of East Africa and Newcastle University have been embarking on a series of workshops designed to better understand the entrepreneurial nature of public art. Simply put, how do we as artists make a living.
One of the key aspects that has come out over the first two workshops is artists needing the toold to better present themselves in professional spaces, mainly through their writing.
Our last workshop will focus on how artists can shape written material about themselves to open themselves up to opportunity. Quite uniquely, this workshop will also include some sensory exercises which look writing as a result of a sensory experience in creative spheres of our thought as well.
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Join us on a tour of different exhibitions to close the festival. A specially hired matatu will take us from Kiyembe, to Nakasero to Kampala Road and more as our artists take you on their journey of creation and sharing their work with our city. After the tour, there will also be a discussion with KLA ART artists about their time at the festival, their pieces and their interactions with audience members. What have we learnt, what have we done and where might we be going from here.
If you would also like to organise a private tour, please get in touch with [email protected] to book!
Join us in the day and in the night for a Nakasero Market Night party. During the day, artists Darlyne Komukama of Rage Room, William Kane of Masks and Maasai Mbili of Ya Tola (see our “artists” section above for their work[pls link] ) will open up their respective market booths to the audience.
During the day, this is a fun chance for femmes to release all their rage in Darlyne’s specially constructed rage room, or for you to engage with Maasai Mbili’s interactive room in the market, or take your own photograph in William Kane’s “Mask” self-photo booth. The day will end with a DJ set from our very own Darlyne and a performance from the one and only Mr Mankwa! Darlyne’s work will also be active on the 19th of August from 2pm onwards.
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How do we as visual artists engage in humanitarian subject matter in our region without perpetuating the NGO visual language around African images born in photography the 80s? How do we as visual artists work around the visuals, once just life, now coded with NGO rhetoric and expectation, to give earnest portrayals of a variety of lives? This workshop is a part of the Politics of Return residency at 32° Degrees East, in conjunction with London School of Economics, curated by Kara Blackmore.
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Ekyoto with History in Progress and Robinah Nansubuga at Ham Mukasa House, Mengo.
Read moreThe Square Place KLA ART 18 and Writivism are joining forces this year to deliver a unique intersection of their themes, Off the Record and Legacy respectively, and visual arts and literature. Christine Ayo and Karis Upton (see our “artists” section above for their work[pls link] ) are artists who are actively invetigating the impact of legacy and the creation of narrative in both of their KLA ART works. They will be in a panel discussion with reknowned writer David Kaizer and moderator Musoke. Parts of their work will also be on display at the Writivism festival location, the Square.
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Are you looking for something a little faster? Beat the traffic and fly through the city on our safe boda tours. With these, you’ll get a free ride from SafeBoda to explore the city and the work in KLA ART
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Title: Collaborative and Sustainable Practices
32° Degrees East, through KLA ART, British Institute of East Africa and Newcastle University have been embarking on a series of workshops designed to better understand the entrepreneurial nature of public art.
This workshop, the second of three, focuses on art as a collaborative practice and investigates ways that artists can find sustainability within and beyond financial resources. Looking at groups of artists such as Maasai Mbili, they will discuss with us ways that they identify, enjoy, replenish non-financial resources to sustain their group practice. And when there is financial gain, how does one manage and re-invest it so it equally benefits the group?
They will also discuss how they manage time/labour/skill as a resource between their collective and individual projects; And how they determine who owns the rights to the works produced. How do you find ways to financially support members in the group through the work produced? Workshop participants will also understand more about how they navigate content creation and distribution with and without an injection of cash, how can workshop participants can replicate that in their own environment?
What do we mean when we talk about collaboration?
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Seven years have passed since HIPUganda started to share photographs on Facebook and, slightly later, through exhibitions and on its website and the publishing of 8 books. ‘Ebifananyi’, marks the end of an era and the beginning of a new one. It is time to evaluate what the efforts made so far have led to, and to think where things could go in the coming years. The Uganda Press Photo Award and HIPUganda are hosting an intimate soft opening of this exhibition to create room for conversation around these archives.
This event will have the character of an intimate collective brainstorm about the presentation of histories through photographs, and the relationships between past and present.
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History in Progress x UPPA photographer’s discussion at Uganda Museum
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SoFar Sounds is an intimate live event, with extra attention paid to the artist. Starting out in just one city, it has spread like wild fire across more that 79 and keeps growing. It’s unique and fun! On the 12th, of the month, they invite you to a secret location to enjoy the work of surprise guests and artists. Join us in a collaborative event between SoFar Sounds and KLA ART 18.
In our program is live music, dance and poetry. And this SoFar is particularly special, taking place at a unique and little known but very important historical gem in our city. SoFar sounds is by its very nature “Off The Record”. Join us at a secret location on the 12th of August with surprise guests and artists. We’ve got to keep mum about it, but we’re excited to surprise you with 3 short performances from song, to dance to poetry!
To register for a spot, use this link! Hurry, spots are limited.
Join us in celebrating Kampala’s finest. Click to see all events. All KLA ART Artists will be in attendance and there you can get to learn more about their pieces from silent protest performance pieces, large scale tapestry installations, photobooths in Nakasero Market and more. And MTN NYEGE NYEGE doing some live scoring for our video projection!
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History in Progress has been mining images from Uganda’s official and unofficial archives for years. Through the process they published 8 books, unearthed many stories (some public, some personal, some institutional and more). Most importantly, they have created a space for history to be uncovered, or looked at anew with a community and collaborative focus.
The work they have produced will be on display, for the first time as a whole, during KLA ART 18, Off The Record
Read moreHistory in Progress has been mining images from Uganda’s official and unofficial archives for years. Through the process they published 8 books, unearthed many stories (some public, some personal, some institutional and more). Most importantly, they have created a space for history to be uncovered, or looked at anew with a community and collaborative focus.
The work they have produced will be on display, for the first time as a whole, during KLA ART 18, Off The Record
KARA BLACKMORE is a British/American anthropologist, writer, and museum curator who currently lives in Kampala Uganda. Most days she can be found in the sunshine curating new possibilities. She is a Cambridge graduate and currently a PhD student at London School of Economics and leading the Politics of Return residency of 2018.
Her work focuses on displace peoples and critically engaging visual and performance art as tools to stimulate or understand communal conversation around trauma.
GLORIA KICONCO set our theme in motion for KLA ART 018. She is a Ugandan poet, essayist, and zine-maker based in Kampala, Uganda. Her poetry has been published by Brittle Paper, Lawino, So Many Stories, FEMRITE, and will be included in an upcoming anthology for East African writers.
MARGARET NAGAWA has been an artist for over 20 years. She graduated with first class honors Bachelor of Arts in Fine Arts (1994) from Margaret Trowell School of Fine Arts, Makerere University and Kampala, Uganda.
She is currently curator for 32°East’s Pictures of Aging residency, a program in which artists, demographers, social health workers and more come together to research and respond to research around aging in semi-rural areas of Uganda.
This project is in conjunction with Cambridge University, Institute of Infectious Diseases, 32°East and Makerere University.
