CHARITY
ATUKUNDA
CONTEXT NOT AVAILABLE - 2024
Context Not Available (CNA) is a body of work comprised of a zine produced in Kiswahili, German, English, 1 cotton kanga and 2 geometric structures created with handmade backcloth paper,
sisal thread and cotton.
Created by artists Charity Atukunda, Liz Kobusinge and Gloria Kiconco, CNA was commissioned by the Humboldt Forum. The work was shown as part of the exhibition Histories of Tanzania.​
The artists ponder the afterlife of colonial-era photography from East Africa created by Germany as propaganda to justify colonialism. Using the photographs the artists aimed to create a dialogue, initiated by the subject of these images.
The artists also invited the audience to 'bury' the harmful ideas that perpetuate the colonial gaze by taking part in the three ritual stages of death: the wake, remembrance and interment, represented in each circular window of the woven structure.​​
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SEND ME - 2024
Photo by Martin Kharumwa
​"Charity Atukunda's installation offers a thought-provoking commentary on the silent resistance of women, particularly within the context of Ugandan culture. By depicting women posed in submissive positions yet dressed in camouflage Gomesi, Atukunda challenges traditional notions of gender roles and societal expectations.
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The camouflage Gomesi serves as a powerful symbol of concealment, obscuring the true intentions and inner strength of the figures from casual observation. This juxtaposition between outward appearance and hidden resilience invites viewers to question assumptions about women's roles and agency within patriarchal societies.
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The illustrated prints accompanying the installations further deepen the narrative by posing questions and statements that hint at the women's true intentions. Through these subtle cues, Atukunda prompts viewers to consider the complexities of female resistance and the ways in which women navigate and subvert societal constraints. "
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by Maria Olivah Nakato
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NJABALA AN ELEGY - 2024
Photo by Royal Kenogo
Photo by Royal Kenogo
Photo by Royal Kenogo
Photo by Royal Kenogo
Through the Buganda folklore of Njabala I was inspired to learn more about the mythology and stories within my culture. What did these stories say about our pre and post-Colonial society and its attitudes towards women ? Have the values carried then remained up to now?
I found answers within the Master’s Thesis my father wrote in 1994 on how the Bakiga peoples were Christianized. This book not only served as a source of knowledge on the subject but I felt it was something that allowed me to connect to my father who passed on from COVID in 2021, his words speaking to me, a kind of conversation we never had the chance to have.
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The results of this process was an installation created with decorated traditional objects, plants used for purification rituals and charcoal 'paintings'. This body of work is a reflection on loss, its complexity and how we must learn to contain the complexity of all the types of loss we encounter in our lifetimes. The creation of the work itself, transformative, ritualistic, pouring, sprinkling and sieving cooking charcoal, soil and mica mineral onto canvas.
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The process parallels in a way what grief calls us to do, to sit with it, work with it, learn from it, learn to contain it and it's only in this way we can heal and transform ourselves.
PILLARS OF RECTITUDE - 2023
Pillars of Rectitude: Women Artists of the 1960s in East Africa is a project created by the Njabala Foundation. The aim of this project is to reclaim the work of female artists of East Africa in the 1960s, draw connections between discrimination against women in the 1960s and 2020s, open spaces to rethink forms of curation that will break a cycle of erasure, cherish and protect women artists’ voices in Contemporary East Africa.
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In response to this I researched and created a zine, about the artist Sangowawa Manyolo Estelle Betty (1938-1999). Manyolo was a female Ugandan artist active in the 1960s who was a painter and a printmaker. Her work drew inspiration and depicted scenes from Ugandan local culture and folklore.
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Pillars of Rectitude was created by the Njabala Foundation and supported by Rights for Time.
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THE TRANSIENTS - 2021
The Transients is a performance piece conceptualized and developed in the framework of the Kampala Arts Festival 2021 created by 32 Degrees East. It draws inspiration from Kampala city vendors and hawkers, whose resolve and resourcefulness in the face of ever-changing rules is the only way they can make a living in Kampala city. They often creatively carry their merchandise on their bodies. For the hawkers, ‘you wear your hustle so it can’t be taken away’.
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In a performance of commerce as second skin, set to a soundtrack of the bustling sounds of downtown Kampala markets, the artist aims to draw our attention to how vendors physically carry the weight of their survival as they circumvent expensive rent and over-policing in a city where they seek to earn a respectable living.
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The Transients was created in collaboration with:
Dancer: @noelkay2
Poet: @midnight_tsunami
Composer: @koojotheartist
THE VISA CENTRE - 2019
The Visa Centre: immigrants, white saviours and uneven rejection is an article accompanied by illustrations published in on the on the London School of Economics blog part of a mini-series exploring the global inequalities of the visa system and its effects.
Artist Charity Atukunda reveals the hurdles faced by African nationals attempting to travel freely, and how they are rooted in the idea of ‘escaping’ home for the ‘first world’. Recounting personal experience, and using illustrations, Charity exposes the unequal treatment of people globally who seek free movement.
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