“Nobody ever comes up to me and says, ‘Oh, can we show your work?’ she says, sitting among her sculptures. “For me, I just decided and said, ‘Let me go and exhibit my work.’ I asked for the exhibition and they gave me the space.”
Her recent solo show exemplifies an expanding artistic landscape that is making more room for local artists who once struggled for space.
Their sense of exuberance reflects a similar trend across Africa fueled not only by an explosion of exciting new work, but also by the growing ability of curators from the continent to reach out to new collectors at a time of growing global interest in contemporary African art. .
First solo exhibition in Hong Kong of the work of “rainbow artist” Ay-O
First solo exhibition in Hong Kong of the work of “rainbow artist” Ay-O
There are new signs of this momentum. Ivorian painter Aboudia was the world’s best-selling artist in 2022, selling two more artworks than the popular Damien Hirst, according to the Hiscox Artist Top 100 survey. And in November 2023, an artwork by Ethiopian-born artist Julie Mehretu it fetched $10.7 million at auction, a record for an African artist.
![Lilian Nabulime shows a wooden sculpture she is working on at her workshop in Kampala. Photo: AP](https://cdn.i-scmp.com/sites/default/files/d8/images/canvas/2023/12/19/4ab8df8a-41a8-4a6d-ae20-52261c79773e_de361a3f.jpg)
![Lilian Nabulime shows a wooden sculpture she is working on at her workshop in Kampala. Photo: AP](https://cdn.i-scmp.com/sites/default/files/d8/images/canvas/2023/12/19/4ab8df8a-41a8-4a6d-ae20-52261c79773e_de361a3f.jpg)
One of Africa’s most prominent art spaces, the Afriart gallery in Kampala runs a training program for artists, with the most successful of them now able to exhibit their work abroad.
Founder Daudi Karungi usually invites some of his artists to accompany him to art exhibitions abroad, a key element in giving them international exposure, he said.
Those artists not represented by Afriart Gallery have options, including an alternative space in a derelict bank hall in the central Kampala district of Masaka, the setting for a vibrant arts community that was unimaginable five years ago.
A painter born and raised in Uganda, Godwin Champs Namuyimba sold for more than $100,000 at auction in Europe despite being largely unknown at home.
Regular art auctions in Nairobi, the Kenyan capital, have also been critical to the re-evaluation in recent years of Ugandan artists such as Geoffrey Mukasa, a painter who was underappreciated in his lifetime and died poor, but whose work has now high prices.
Many of Mukasa’s works remained unsold when he died in 2009, but his work is now recognized as timeless, says Danda Jaroljmek, an influential curator whose Circle Art Gallery in Nairobi stages the annual auction.
Uganda’s collecting category remains insignificant and gallerists still struggle to make sales. In 2022, a small group of Ugandans formed the Uganda Contemporary Art Society, whose aim is to promote the emergence of private and corporate art collections in the East African country of 45 million people.
Each of the team members is asked to collect at least one artwork from a Ugandan each year, creating opportunities for emerging artists.
Ugandan lawyer Linda Mutesi, an art collector who helped start the Uganda Contemporary Art Society, said the collection for her and others has become a principled effort aimed at preserving Africa’s unique cultural resources.
“Over the years, the African middle class has awakened to the things around them, the beauty around them and the issues around them and as you can see, it has always been the expatriates who come to our countries and take it all. this art away,” he said.
![Nabulime works on a wooden sculpture at her workshop in Kampala. Photo: AP](https://cdn.i-scmp.com/sites/default/files/d8/images/canvas/2023/12/19/014f3c09-601a-43e2-b278-d262f4a6956b_de361a3f.jpg)
![Nabulime works on a wooden sculpture at her workshop in Kampala. Photo: AP](https://cdn.i-scmp.com/sites/default/files/d8/images/canvas/2023/12/19/014f3c09-601a-43e2-b278-d262f4a6956b_de361a3f.jpg)
“I feel like we approach art collecting as an intervention. We kind of protect and say, “Hey, don’t let this go on. Let’s not have the bleeding of these works, all this intellectual property leaving the continent. Let’s keep it here.”
Additional reporting by staff reporter