A black and white digitally manipulated drawing by Ugandan female artist Charity Atukunda titled Blessed is the spectrum depicts a woman in relaxed mood smoking a cigarette.
Drawn on Hahnemuhle photo rag paper, the artwork shows the woman, who is seated dressed in the Ugandan traditional garment, gomesi, with braided hairstyle.
“When creating this work, I wanted to ask “What makes a respectable Ugandan woman? Who gets to decide what behaviour is considered appropriate? Do these behaviours and actions dictate how much you belong to your culture or on the periphery?
''The gomesi is a traditional attire in Uganda, said to command respect; they are often bright and decorative and worn at social and traditional gatherings,” Atukunda says.
“Through this work, I aim to speak on my individual experience of being as a Ugandan woman and how it’s intertwined with the greater reality of how the more liberated and free-thinking a Ugandan woman becomes, the harder it becomes for their culture to accept them.
This art piece asserts the right for women of all ideological leanings to exist in their traditional cultural spaces by portraying women in traditional clothing doing (in)appropriate things,” Atukunda adds.
Atukunda’s artwork is on display at “Shapes of Water,” a group exhibition of 10 women artists from eastern and southern Africa.
The other participating artists are Amani Azhari (Sudan), Naseeba Bagalaaliwo (Uganda), Nelsa Guambe (Mozambique), April Kamunde (Kenya), Maliza Kiasuwa (DRC), Charlene Komuntale (Uganda), Kitso Lynn Lelliott (South Africa), Sungi Mlengeya (Tanzania), and Mona Taha (Uganda). It is curated by Lara Buchmann.
Sungi’s painting Lala meaning sleep in Swahili depicts a woman lying down with her eyes closed.
“Exhaustion, especially for women has been normalised,” Sungi says. “Those who have day jobs, perform domestic chores and are still primary caretakers at home are celebrated as superwomen, but should this be something to always celebrate? Are some people being overworked while others are left to perform only parts of their obligations?”
Azhari has two artworks It’s not enough 1 and It’s not enough 10 showing the same female face in different appearances.
Bagalaaliwo has an animated short film, Still from Scalp Deep, that focuses on own personal anxiety about short hair.
“I decided to make a film about why women trim their hair and explore the misconceptions around beauty and identity ,” Bagalaaliwo says. Guambe’s works Homage to the sailor I and Homage to the Sailor II presented in this exhibition are part of a larger body of work created after the deadly cyclone Dineo hit Inhambane and its surrounding coastal areas in Mozambique.
After visiting her home village Chicuque, Guambe found partly destroyed sails littering the village. Many fishermen lost their boats to Dineo. Guambe decided to collect these sails and use them as canvases for her paintings.
Sundays are not rest days I and Sundays are not rest days II are part of Kamunde’s recent body of work exploring meanings of rest and the pursuit of it, from a personal and feminist angle. The work is a response to feelings of weariness triggered by the pandemic and the endeavour to live a successful and fulfilling life in fast-paced Nairobi.
Komuntale’s digital paintings Liberation dress and Free dress show different women with their heads covered with open paper boxes with the word Not Fragile in colour red. The exhibition opened on May 27 and closes on August 12 at the Afriart Gallery in Kampala.
