Visual artist Wasswa Donald August is back in a solo exhibition for the very first time at Under Ground! He has a new body of artworks he has been crafting since 2015 which include an unusual installation, sculptures and drawings.
He is going to transform the exhibition space into one gigantic artwork where the installation, which will involve over 100 models, will be the main attraction.
The exhibition is entitled “Zikunta”. Zikunta investigates the effects of the movement of people. It focuses in particular on the psycho-socio consequences of migration, especially the phenomenon of rural-urban migration.
It also examines the current refugee crises all over the globe and the connect between neo-colonialism in African countries and the search for greener pastures away from Africa. Zikunta finally dissects multiculturalism or the meeting and coexistence of diverse cultures in the areas of religion and thought, and the nature of communication between these two areas.
The exhibition is set to open on 3rd September 2016 at 11:59pm at Nakumatt Oasis Mall Basement with a performance and the installation. The unusual hour, a minute shy of midnight is no accident. It implies how time gets suspended and lose meaning in extreme situations of ecstasy or crisis, such as when people flee their homes and become refugees in a foreign land.
In making his artworks, Wasswa draws from his personal experiences like the return of Asians to Uganda in the late 1980s and 1990s which led to his family having to vacate the Nakivubo Flats in the city center where he had grown up and migrate to rural Kyebando.
The artworks are also informed by the development of Kampala capital city that attracted the rural people to the city in search of better standards of living, and the political insurgencies in neighboring countries that have forced many people to seek asylum in Uganda.