Sudi Kukumba imagines African village in abstract

Works of Ugandan painter Sudi Kukumba are not easy to come by as he is rather private and has limited exposure on digital platforms. So it was a pleasure to view some of his paintings at The Bookworm Gigiri in Nairobi, a mixed-use library, art gallery and niche clothing store.

Kukumba is participating as part of the ongoing Art Around Us exhibition that was inspired by recent Covid-19 experiences where people found they had to look in nearby places to meet their daily needs.

“The Bookworm sought to look around ourselves to find art in unusual spaces like street art, a vanguard graffiti exhibition and now some visiting Ugandan artists,” said Bookworm co-founder and artist Drishti Vohra.

The Kukumba collection at the Bookworm is called Pursuit of the African Village. On display are figurative and portraiture works, countryside scenes and family life.

The work can be understood as ‘a dialogue between the city, village and the people around it.’

With four decades of painting to his name, Kukumba is one of the longest practising artists in Uganda. He trained at the Margaret Trowell School of Industrial and Fine Art at the Makerere University, with a particular focus on painting and sculpting, graduating first class.

He worked briefly at the university before leaving to become a full-time artist.

Initially he focused on sculpture art and created three dimensional reliefs on the walls of commercial spaces.

Transitioning from sculpting

Kukumba’s works are permanently featured at the Sheraton Kampala Hotel, the Grand Imperial Hotel, The British Council and the Bank of Uganda.

Eventually he transitioned into painting in order to “enjoy colour and to diversify.”

Working in both acrylics and oil paints, Kukumba draws his ideas and themes from impressions of African settings, family circumstances, city and rural life. His paintings of villages are often filled with imagery of pots, huts, traditional musical instruments, animals, people and faces presented in a contemporary way.

“His work reminds me of Picasso’s cubist style and also of many of the artists known for their geometric compositions,” says Vohra. “I also like the colour schemes and that his compositions have various shapes.”

Bold eyes, prominent lips, long necks and misaligned body parts characterise Kukumba’s figures while his illustrations major on geometric shapes and symbols, neat patterns, clean outlines and straight lines. The colour schemes are heavy on red, brown, deep yellow and sky blue.

Kukumba’s abstract style and themes have not changed much over the years yet there is an instant likeability to his work and an easy understanding of the subject matter.

His painting technique begins with mini-sketches that are turned into full blown sketches then transferred onto canvas.

The process can take several months depending on the size of the picture, complexity, medium and his mood on a particular day, he says.

And he tends to create large art pieces.

This is Kukumba's first exhibition in Kenya and continues until the end of March.

But among the paintings in the African Village collection I found smaller abstract portraits in bright earthy tones. The disfigured faces had only a few features and along with the surrounding pale background, the effect was a minimalist feel that gives the viewer lots of room for the imagination to flow.

He works from his home studio in Kampala, often sometimes with a radio playing in the background.

“The African setup is full of browns in the compounds that we have, the crafts and arts, which are centred on brown colours. And since we have the sun shining you will find a lot of yellow embedded into my paintings,” he said in a taped interview.