Vibrant arts scene in Uganda a sign of African boom
Curators from the continent find new collectors amid rising global interest in modern works
Lilian Nabulime hasn’t forgotten the time in the 1990s when the Ugandan capital had just one commercial art gallery, a small space that emerging artists struggled to get into.
Now there are at least six in Kampala, including one whose curator recently exhibited the sculptor’s contrarian work.
Nabulime’s show, which has attracted audiences for its conspiratorial take on the peculiarities of urban “gossip”, might never have happened if she hadn’t approached Xenson Art Space and asked for the opportunity to exhibit her work. Her work includes terracotta works topped with the deformed facial features of gossip bearers.
“Nobody ever comes to me and says, ‘Oh, can we show your work?’” she said, sitting amid her sculptures. “For me, I just decided and said, ‘Let me go and exhibit my work.’ I asked for the exhibition, and they gave me the space.”
Her recent solo show exemplifies an expanding artistic landscape that allows more room for local artists who once struggled for space.
Their sense of cheer mirrors a similar trend across Africa that’s fuelled not just by an explosion of compelling new work but also by the growing ability of curators from the continent to reach new collectors at a time of rising global interest in modern African art.
There are fresh signs of this momentum. The Ivorian painter Aboudia was the world’s bestselling artist in 2022, selling two more artworks than the popular Damien Hirst, according to the Hiscox Artist Top 100 survey. And in November 2023, an artwork by the Ethiopian-born artist Julie Mehretu fetched US$10.7 million at auction, a record for an African artist.
In addition to the annual Art Auction East Africa in Kenya – during which dead and living artists are valued, if not rediscovered – the most ambitious curators from Africa are accredited to attend international events such as the influential Art Basel art fairs.
In a sign of growing demand and interest in Asia for African art, the 1-54 African art fair will make its debut in Hong Kong in March 2024, featuring about 25 galleries.
One of Africa’s most prominent art spaces, Afriart Gallery in Kampala runs a training programme for artists, with the most successful among them now able to show their work abroad.
Founder Daudi Karungi usually invites some of his artists to join him at art fairs abroad, a key element in giving them international visibility, he said.
Those artists not represented by Afriart Gallery have choices, including an alternative space in a disused banking hall in the Kampala district of Masaka, the scene of an artistic community unimaginable five years ago.
A painter born and raised in Uganda, Godwin Champs Namuyimba, has had pieces sell for upwards of US$100,000 at auction in Europe despite being largely unknown at home.
The regular art auction in Nairobi, the Kenyan capital, has also been critical in the reappraisal in recent years of Ugandan artists such as Geoffrey Mukasa, a painter who was underappreciated in his lifetime but whose work now commands high prices.
Many of Mukasa’s works remained unsold by the time he died in 2009, but his work is now acknowledged as timeless, says Danda Jaroljmek, a curator whose Circle Art Gallery in Nairobi puts on the annual auction.
Uganda’s collecting class remains minuscule, and gallerists struggle to make sales. In 2022, a small group of Ugandans formed the Contemporary Art Society of Uganda, whose goal is to promote private and corporate art collections in the East African country of 45 million people.
Each of the group’s members is asked to collect at least one artwork by a Ugandan each year, creating opportunities for emerging artists.
Over the years, the African middle class has been awakened LINDA MUTESI, UGANDAN LAWYER AND ART COLLECTOR
Ugandan lawyer Linda Mutesi, an art collector who helped launch the Contemporary Art Society of Uganda, said that collecting for her and others has become a principled effort aimed at retaining Africa’s unique cultural resources.
“Over the years, the African middle class has been awakened to the things around them, the beauty around them and the issues that surround them and, as you can see, it’s always been the expatriates that sort of come to our countries and take all this art away,” she said.
“I feel that we are approaching collecting of art as an intervention. We are sort of safeguarding and saying, ‘Hey, let’s not have this continue. Let’s not have the bleeding of these works, all this intellectual property leaving the continent. Let’s keep it here.’”