Reimag[in]ing the Village as a Portrait of a Nation-State in Uganda

all photos by author except where otherwise noted

In this article I reexamine the ways in which certain contemporary artists based in Uganda problematize the narrative that the ruling National Resistance Movement (the NRM) party is the party of the rural poor (Cheeseman, Lynch, and Willis 2016) in their work while using it as a metaphor to inform their visual expression. I focus on the contest between tradition (imagined as a village) and modernity (imagined as a modern state), as well as the dilemma such a contest causes for a contemporary artist. Cornelius Adepegba (1995) argues that this dilemma influenced the African novel. Agreeing with Adepegba, Freeborn Odiboh (2009) observes that the same dilemma has shaped African visual artists, such as Abayomi Barber, and formal art education institutions like the Barber School in Nigeria; Odiboh then assesses the historical context in which this dilemma evolved as African nationalists struggled to forge postcolonial states based on a national consciousness amid competing ethnic, religious, and ideological interests.

I would argue that African artists resolved the dilemma through hybridity. However, the experience in Uganda has invited me to look again at the way contemporary artists construct “tradition” and “traditionalized village spaces” to critique the health of the postcolonial nation-state in which they practice. How do they reorient their practices to address pertinent political issues imposed by a modern state as they make a case for a welfare state using an egalitarian village grounded in traditions? This question—and critique—is relevant to the understanding of specific artworks in which the village is imagined and visually reconstructed as a representation of a better postcolonial nation-state.

I have purposively selected artworks in which artists present a traditional, productive village as a representation of an ideal postcolonial welfare nation-state as they confront the long list of unfulfilled promises and false hopes (Mutibwa 1992) that characterize Uganda under the NRM. This long list has been a subject of intense public debate and was recently captured in a cartoon by Moses Balagadde, a graduate of Makerere’s art school (Fig. 1).

Some formally trained artists from Uganda are employed as anchors and talk show hosts; they direct television and radio talk shows in which Uganda’s statehood is debated.¹ Alongside exhibiting in the galleries, museums, and their studios, some artists publish comic strips in the local dailies and magazines. These artists are often satirical and humorous as they influence, and are influenced by, the sociopolitical discussions of the day.² I have found the electronic and print media resourceful to this examination, since the artists whose works I analyze regularly access the media.³ The article contributes to discussions on the link among Uganda’s art, art history, political action, public policy, and legal documents in which the health of the nation-state is negotiated and inscribed.

THE TRADITIONAL VILLAGE AS COLONIAL MYTH AND METAPHOR

Like many other peoples in the world, most Ugandans cherish their traditions. However, the notion that a traditional village can resolve the challenges imposed by a postcolonial nation-state is not entirely based on this love for tradition. It has an interesting political history that needs to be explained before we appreciate art forms in which artists imagine visual representation of a traditional, rural village which, unlike (nontraditional) modern urban centers, is rich in morality, traditions, shared values, and work ethos. We are made to believe that such a village presents an ideal space; it is African (read black African) and communal. It is framed by a postcolonial discourse that has shaped literature⁴ and music⁵ in the same way as it has informed contemporary Ugandan art.

I however submit that such a village (and its Africanness) was not available as a lived reality in the 1960s when Uganda became a postcolonial nation-state. By October 1962, the colonial project, mainly through taxation and compulsory cash and food production, had opened up and transformed most of the villages in the country. Interestingly, and ambivalently so, colonial discourse still mapped and retained villages as sanctuaries of “authentic traditions” through...