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Art kings, and why the Alur are the ‘most civilised’ Ugandans
What you need to know:
- The Kuona Trust. If books, media, photographs, and song don’t tell Uganda story – of exile, of return, of war, of loss, of victories – its art does.
- Just that we really aren’t looking. The Kuona Trust is a leading arts collective and gallery in Nairobi. On a visit there, we heard of an encounter with a brilliant budding Kenyan artist. He said he studied art at Makerere University.
A few days ago, with BBC journalist Alan Kasujja, and Oxfam International Executive Director Winnie Byanyima, we visited honorary Ugandan Patrick Quarcoo (PQ).
PQ and family recently moved into their new house, about which there is a lot to be said, but we won’t. But PQ also “inconvenienced” his arm in a gym a while back, and recently had surgery to correct things, so he is making do with a sling for some weeks. But mostly it was a kind of “Capital Gang” (on Capital FM) reunion.
All the four of us at some point had been part of the “Capital Gang” story. One morning, at the height of “the Gang”, PQ brought an audience survey to the studio and asked us, “can any of you guess the audience share of ‘the Gang’”? None of us got close. Then he read it out; “64 per cent. Yes, 64 per cent.” It was a domination we ourselves never got our heads around fully.
We yelped, did high fives, and poured out special brewed Bancafe coffee and fresh cookies Steve Banya sent us religiously every Saturday morning for years without fail.
We talked politics, the old days on “the Gang”, and eventually art. Surprise, surprise, PQ and Winnie are art collectors – particularly Ugandan art. Winnie is even a small time of the patrons, and over the years has built probably one of the largest private collections by a contemporary Ugandan.
PQ does the “big bang”; he collects the dramatic and edgy ones, drawn large and has some beauties hanging in his house.
They left me thinking though with their stories about Ugandan art. There is a near-consensus that Ugandan artists are the best in East Africa.
One of the greatest of them was Jak Katarikawe. Katarikawe died in Nairobi, where he had lived since he fled Idi Amin’s rule in the early 1970s, on October 19 this year. The Star newspaper described him as “a trailblazer of the early generation of contemporary East African artists”.
Osei Kofi, a Ghanaian-born art investor and gallery owner living in Kenya, once said; “If you don’t buy art from Jak, your grandchildren will curse you…”
Katarikawe’s work went on to be among the most highly priced globally by an East African artist. We bring up Katarikawe because it has been said Uganda’s lead artistic is down to the unique tradition that grew out of the (Margaret Trowell) School of Fine Art at Makerere University, the first arts college in East Africa.
Yes, but it can only be part of the story. Born in Kigezi between 1938 and 1940, Katarikawe was entirely self-taught. One report said he inherited the talent from his mother, who used to decorate the walls of their mud hut, with elephants and other designs.
Seems we need to look elsewhere. We spent some time talking about Ugandan food, with Winnie provoking the argument. In her view, a people’s food and music, especially the instrumentation and melody, are windows into their civilisation – in the more scientific sense of the word. To her, by, especially, the range and sophistication of their cuisine, the Alur are the most civilised Ugandans!
Art too, comes from the same place as food and music. Uganda is different from the rest of modern-day East Africa in the number of kingdoms and chieftaincies it had. With patronage, and the cultural reproduction necessary to record monarchical history and flatter royalty – which were often in competition with each other – grew an artistic tradition.
In troubled times, this creative infrastructure (and DNA), became transported to be the commentary of our times, going beyond the usual politics, to as far as being critiques of the church, as seen in Paul Ndema’s controversial painting in PQ’s house on the sexual abuse of boys by priests in the Catholic Church. Art has become a layer of the national experience in Uganda, probably in ways it isn’t in other countries in the region.
If books, media, photographs, and song don’t tell Uganda story – of exile, of return, of war, of loss, of victories – its art does. Just that we really aren’t looking.
The Kuona Trust is a leading arts collective and gallery in Nairobi. On a visit there, we heard of an encounter with a brilliant budding Kenyan artist. He said he studied art at Makerere University. He went back to Kenya, and then returned to Uganda to study more art. It wasn’t to Makerere. He returned to St Lawrence University in Mengo.
The experience there changed him. Striking, because few people know St Lawrence University for its Art! “They teach art there in ways no one possibly does in Africa”, he swore.
There is “something special” about Uganda and art, he said. Like the precious family jewel, it’s hidden from the common touch and the hands of the Barbarians. But it speaks to those who are pure of heart.
Mr Onyango-Obbo is the publisher of Africa data visualiser Africapedia.com and explainer site. Roguechiefs.com. Twitter@cobbo3
