Nommo Gallery Kampala: Uganda’s most important art space

Nommo Gallery shows primarily contemporary Ugandan fine art in rotating exhibitions: painting, sculpture, printmaking, photography, and increasingly installation and video work as Uganda’s younger generation of artists engage with international contemporary art practice. The gallery has hosted solo and group exhibitions of Uganda’s most significant contemporary artists, including George Kyeyune (painter and academic); Moses Serubiri and others who have represented Uganda at international art events; and the generation of artists trained at Makerere University’s Margaret Trowell School of Industrial and Fine Art — the art school established at Makerere in 1937 by Margaret Trowell that has been the foundational institution for Ugandan visual art education. The work shown at Nommo engages with specifically Ugandan subjects: political history, the Idi Amin period, post-conflict recovery in northern Uganda, environmental change, ethnic identity, and urban life in Kampala are recurring themes. The gallery also shows craft and decorative arts alongside fine art and maintains a small permanent sculpture installation in its outdoor space. The programme changes regularly; check the Uganda National Cultural Centre website or contact the gallery directly for current exhibitions.

Uganda’s contemporary art scene is small but internationally active. George Kyeyune is a painter and Makerere University academic whose work engages with Ugandan social history; he is among the most exhibited Ugandan artists internationally. Xenson (Stephen Langa) is a Kampala-based multimedia artist whose work addresses Ugandan LGBTQ issues and social taboos in a context of significant domestic risk, and who has received international art world attention. Sanaa Gateja creates work using beaded paper-roll sculpture drawing on both traditional Ugandan crafts and contemporary installation practice; his work has been shown in Europe and America. Ronex Ahimbisibwe is a sculptor working with traditional materials and contemporary forms. The Makerere Art Gallery (within Makerere University) maintains the work of the early generation of Ugandan artists trained by Margaret Trowell, including Francis Nnaggenda whose work is among the most internationally collected Ugandan art. For visitors interested in buying Ugandan art: Nommo Gallery, the Makerere Art Gallery, and craft markets (Kampala’s Owino Market has craft stalls; the craft market near the National Theatre) provide access to original Ugandan work at prices substantially below international gallery rates.

Makerere University in Kampala has been the foundational institution for East African visual art education since the British missionary teacher Margaret Trowell established what is now the Margaret Trowell School of Industrial and Fine Art in 1937. Trowell’s approach was unusual for colonial-era art education: she encouraged students to draw from their own cultural traditions and observations rather than copying European academic models, producing a generation of East African painters who developed an indigenous modernism rather than derivative colonial mimicry. The school trained artists from across East Africa and produced the foundational figures of Ugandan, Kenyan, and Tanzanian modern art. The Makerere Art Gallery maintains a significant permanent collection of work from this foundational generation and is open to visitors; the gallery is on the Makerere University campus and accessible by taxi or boda-boda from central Kampala. The Uganda Museum, near Makerere, has ethnographic collections that provide context for traditional arts and crafts alongside the fine art tradition. The combination of the Uganda Museum, Nommo Gallery, and Makerere Art Gallery constitutes a half-day to full-day cultural programme for Kampala visitors interested in Uganda’s art history.

Uganda has a rich craft tradition and Kampala has several venues for buying high-quality Ugandan craft work. The Banana Boat craft shop (Kisementi, Kololo) and Crafts Village near the National Theatre are the most visitor-friendly venues with fixed prices and quality-vetted work. Specific Ugandan craft forms worth knowing: Bark cloth (mutuba): Uganda’s UNESCO-listed traditional textile, made from the inner bark of the mutuba fig tree (Ficus natalensis); the Buganda process is a UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage. Woven baskets: the coiled grass baskets of southwestern Uganda (from Kigezi district near Bwindi) are among the finest in East Africa — intricate geometric patterns in natural and dyed grasses. Tinga tinga-style painting: available in Kampala markets, though the genre originates in Tanzania. Ugandan beaded jewellery: paper-bead jewellery (made by rolling magazine pages into beads, coating them, and stringing them) is a Kampala craft industry employing many women; Sanaa Gateja’s paper-bead work is the fine art version of this tradition. Recycled aluminium sculptures: Kampala metalworkers produce figurative sculptures from recycled aluminium; functional quality varies but the best are significant craft objects. Prices in the Owino market and roadside stalls are lower than in the dedicated craft shops; quality requires more careful selection.

Uganda’s political history — independence in 1962, the Amin dictatorship (1971-1979), the Obote II period and civil war (1981-1986), the LRA conflict in the north (1986-2006), and the long Museveni presidency — has left deep marks on Ugandan visual art. The Amin period is present in Ugandan art as both direct subject (portraits of survivors, documentation of atrocity, the abandoned Asian properties) and as metaphor for state violence. Several Ugandan artists have worked specifically with the LRA conflict: the mass displacement of Acholi people into IDP camps between 1996 and 2006, the child soldier experience, and the post-conflict reconciliation process have produced a body of work from artists including those trained at the Gulu-based Invisible Children-supported programmes in the north. Contemporary Ugandan art also engages with global issues through a specifically Ugandan lens: environmental change and deforestation (the loss of forest cover in a country where forest was the basis of culture and economy for many communities), urban growth, and the tension between tradition and modernity in an economically growing but institutionally contested society. For visitors to Nommo Gallery, the political and social content of Ugandan art is more accessible than it might appear: the specificity of the Uganda context makes the work more, not less, engaging for a visitor who has been in the country for even a few days.