It is hard to talk about how my work is perceived. I think it’s received well but there have to be enough critics from the continent reviewing it for me to learn how it is perceived. When I started, people doing the kind of work I do in my country were negligible though some existed in other countries. All I can say as my mother often says, ‘the future is abundant’.
By engaging African ritualistic elements in order to invoke themes of historic healing, the artist demonstrates the measure with which what is perpetual about the moral putrefaction that characterizes society is persevered by what is ambiguous between the play of history and time, and between historic moments and contemporary examination.
In November last year Sasha Dees started travelling in the Caribbean region, researching the sustainability of contemporary art practices and the influence of international (exchange) projects, funding, markets and politics. During her research she will be keeping a travelogue for Africanah. Her first stop in the region was Ayiti (Haiti). In March she reported about her stay on Korsou (Curacao). In the April edition Aruba was reported on. Jamaica followed in May. Now the Cayman Islands and the US Virgin Islands are on.
My paintings are also a testimony to the beauty and intelligence of pre-colonial societies and a tribute to how these societies were organised. The way in which I place these societies in relation to the present is rather like tracing a traditional and cultural knowledge that was crushed by the rise of industrial power.
1990 is when I started doing the bead work in Uganda and practice has spread all over Uganda, to Kenya, Rwanda and now South Africa. The beads have now become a Ugandan brand and when you google ‘paper beads’, Uganda has to come up somewhere.