Uganda 2022

Title: Radiance: They dream In Time
Commissioner: Naumo Juliana Akoryo
Curator: Shaheen Merali
Exhibitors: Acaye Kerunen, Collin Sekajugo

This is the first time for Uganda to be represented at the 59th Venice Biennale. The exhibition,  curated by Shaheen Merali, features artists Acaye Kerunen and Collin Sekajugo.

The exhibition aims to showcase, to an international audience, Ugandan traditions, and modernity. On the traditional side, Acaye Kerunen focuses on ecological, social, and local processes, exploring the work of Ugandan craftswomen to narrate the agency of women’s work in Africa and acknowledge the role that this artistic labour plays in the climate ecosystem.

Collin Sekajugo depicts Uganda’s modernity conversing and critiquing the global mainstream biases across visual, oral, and digital cultures. Sekajugo manipulates the common stock image to reveal its inherent biases of entitlement and privilege largely modeled on the Western self.

Merali claimed that the title “Radiance: They dream In Time” refers to the essential knowledge and lived experiences of Kerunen and Sekajugo in speaking to the many different territories of Uganda as well as to urban trade and living conditions in its urban centres.

Both artists have been actively working with formal and informal archives of Uganda’s dynamic visual culture.