Thursday 21 September 20234:00pm to 5:30pmSchool II, St Salvator’s Quad, School II
‘Leilah Babiyre made and exhibited the installation ‘I care about you’ (2016) during the ARTWORK AT KAMPALA Exhibition hosted at Makerere University in 2016. She used this work to publicly declare that she was gay (something that costed her admission for graduate training in 2018). She is currently exiled in the USA. In the presentation, I shall raise issues of art, politics and law to speak about Babirye’s work, mine and that of two others Sheila Nakitende and Mzili Mujunga. These are the few visual artists who have dared to speak about gay rights in Uganda.’
Dr Angelo Kakande (Associate Professor, Margaret Trowell School of Industrial and Fine Arts, Makerere University, Uganda) is visiting the School of Art History in September 2023 as part of his 2023-2024 Global Fellowship at the University of St Andrews. Dr Kakande is an artist, art historian and lawyer, and an expert in histories of modern and contemporary art in East Africa. His artworks and publications have particularly engaged with the ways in which art functions in defense of individual and collective rights. He joins us at St Andrews in connection with Dr Kate Cowcher’s ongoing research project, Dar to Dunoon, investigating the African modern artworks in the Argyll Collection.