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Maria Naita gone but her work lives
Maria Naita carves a sculpture in 2015. Below, The Stride at Parliament, one of the monuments she took part in making . COURTESY PHOTOS
What you need to know:
IN memoriam. As Uganda celebrated independence on Wednesday, many may not have known that Maria Naita, a sculptress, who took part in making monuments such as The Stride at Parliament and The Journey at Kololo Airstrip passed on. ANDREW KAGGWA looks at the career of a woman whose works became national symbols.
Her future was for artists to have a place where they could mess around.
Maria Naita,51, always believed that artists are messy with wood cuttings, clay droppings and paint oils , that getting them space would give them liberty to work without minding what people say.
It is not known if by the time Naita died on September 27, this was still her dream: for almost two years, she had gone off the art social circles.
For a soft-spoken woman, that unlike many prolific artists, had chosen to go out and become an artist as opposed to staying in Makerere University to teach, she was one you could easily miss at events.
Maria Naita
Off the scene
It was not surprising that it took her death for people to notice she had been missing in action for long. Yet those close to the industry knew Naita had been ill. For instance, an exhibition to support her medication was organised at Afriart Gallery in April, dubbed A Friend in Need Charity Exhibition. This was a collective showcase that saw different artists, some of whom had taught her, offer their works to be sold to collect money.
She was probably unknown to people that do not follow the art scene.
Her work
She is credited as one of the sculptors on the team that carved, The Journey, a 50th independence anniversary monument in Kololo Airstrip and The Stride, a CHOGM monument at parliament.
The Stride is one many Ugandans are familiar with. It is of a child matching with a bare chest man and woman raising a flag that has a CHOGM symbol, the artwork is so monumental that it later became a feature on the Shs50,000 bank note.
In a 2015 interview with the Daily Monitor, Naita revealed that she had been fascinated with art since her childhood. then she would make her own dolls, yet as she grew up, she resorted to filling their house with paintings. Then she revealed that she looked up to artists such as Prof Francis Nagenda and Dr George Kyeyune that were both her lecturers.
Her paintings were mostly inspired by women from her daily life, sometimes draped like queens to children.
Dominic Muwanguzi, an arts journalist, writes of her work as a feel good kind of art that is intended to promote peace and tranquility within the community.
“Her palette is often energetic and vibrant, evoking a serene and vivacious aura that surrounds the home setting,” he says.
Muwanguzi notes that Naita is one of the few women on the contemporary art scene that defied stereotypes and while at it displayed a conscience of her equal rights in a male-dominated industry.
“Maria [Naita] does not dwell on questions of femininity, feminism and sexuality although her audience can feel feminine side in her work,” Muwanguzi noted early this year.
For instance, The Stride, she once noted was inspired by a life like hers, representing her multiple roles as an African working woman, a mother, wife and human being.
Passing on the skill
Naita was never all about herself, for instance, she had established Kann Artist Studio on Entebbe Road with most of her works in progress but also a work station of Art interns she took on from Uganda Christian University, Mukono and Makerere University. On other days, she would work with apprentices.
And many of those she worked with went on to inspire the art fraternity in different ways. For instance, Leila Babirye, a Ugandan artist in the diaspora, noted that she remembers learning from Maria’s studio.
“For those who learnt a lot from her studios, we shine because of her. Students she taught during their internship, she welcomed us in her home wholeheartedly. she taught us all she had,” says Babirye.
Much as some were familiar with The Journey, it is The Stride that many were aware of. Others preferred to talk about her monument Building the Nation at the Rwanda Revenue Authority in Kigali, while many more still had pictures of paintings from her last solo show in 2016.
Gaston Ssemboga, who had worked with Naita on an installation in Kigali, noted that he was currently doing other works he hoped to collaborate with her.
Her candle burns out
The news of Naita’s death started making rounds on social media on Thursday, September 26. Since January 2018, she had been battling bone cancer, which explains her absence on the scene.
On the fateful Thursday, the 51-year-old was at Nsambya Hospital. By Friday morning, people, especially art lovers had already dug up pictures of her works rather than those of herself to celebrate different ways she blessed the world.
Maria was laid to rest on September 28, at her home in Kaliro District.
About Maria Naita
Maria Naita was an accomplished multimedia African female artist whose art career spans nearly two decades. She held a Master’s in Fine Art from Makerere University, Kampala.
A seasoned sculptress she worked with wood, metal, cement and fibreglass. By the time of her death, she had worked on several major public monuments in the Great Lakes region. In 2005 she founded the KANN Artists studio on the Kampala-Entebbe highway.
In 2014, Naita was commissioned by the government of Uganda to make The Journey a sculpture commemorating Uganda’s 50th Independence, The Kabamba Monument in Bombo, 2013, The stride Monument to commemorate the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting hosted in Uganda.
Naita’s works have been exhibited since 1995, particularly Women Artists on the Move. She was married to Charles Naita and is survived by four children.
