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The Food basket
A segment of Iraa-the Granary that delves into the resources that we have and can harness within our artistic communities both locally and internationally. These resources are in 2 categories; 1. Mid-career & Professional practitioners, 2. Services and their various providers.
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​Mid-career & Professionals
Under this segment, Iraa-the Granary invites people who are mid-career to professionals in art related fields to share about their practices through lectures, symposiums, workshops, talks and so on. The aim for this segment is to exploit the knowledge bases that already exist within our networks as sources for learning, inspiration and possible collaboration. Some of the professionals we aim to reach through the Food basket programing include artists, curators, writers, poets, accountants, lawyers etc.
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Services and their various providers
This segment is majorly a database of sorts encompassing contacts of service providers, transport and logistic companies, interesting podcasts, books, publishers to work with and so on. The creation of this database is an attempt to minimize workings with shoddy and unprofessional service providers in Uganda as the database is built based on recommendations of individuals who have worked with the service providers before. It can be a go to list for quick transactions while in Uganda.
Abakyala be'Namutamba tebalela ngalo. (The Food Basket 1) Hosted by Sanaa Gateja and the community in Namutamba. 17.02.2024
When we think of the eco-systems that exist around our practices as artists, it becomes apparent that we can’t exist without community consciously or unconsciously. 17.02.2024 gave us the opportunity to further understand the community, assistants, ecosystems that support Sanaa Gateja and his art practice. A bit Beyond just the Art if there is ever really a separation between life lived and an artist’s practice. We were hosted at the beautiful home of auntie Eva, The artist’s elder sister whose presence and level of control only exudes admirable matriarchal power. The one thing that has stood out since the inception of these Iraa activities is the level of generosity that is quite honestly humbling and in the case of this 1st ever FOOD BASKET SESSION hosted by Sanaa and the community in Namutamba, it is the power of good relations that the session so strongly reflects. The women from Namutamba Women Victors Group cooked food and said omukolo gwafee temutusasula… literally we are happy to cook without payment for our labor because the event is our own. A statement that exudes community responsibility and generosity that has slowly been eroded from urban spaces that function on a capitalist mentality. We had the opportunity to walk to the tea factory where Sanaa’s father worked , to the kisawe (open field) where all community activities happened and still happen including Boxing Day fashion shows, football matches, village meetings, election of leaders and a show of the most well fed chubby babies. We had the opportunity to visit a piece of land belonging to the artist that he intends to develop into a studio space as well as museum for the community. Conversations on what museum means in this context are currently ongoing and we look forward to encountering what that might be. The women spoke so fondly of the artist each giving an account of how they came to be a part of his community of artist assistants. The fair compensation for the work they do while working on a project could not be missed.
Image Credit: Hype media
Sanaa Gateja (b. 1950, Kisoro, Uganda) makes intricate works from post-consumer paper that he rolls into beads, sewing them onto bark cloth supports in tapestry-like assemblages. Up close, the beads offer glimpses, between folds, of their past lives—as vintage posters, pages from wig sales pamphlets, and outdated textbooks, among other things. His distinctive method requires the involvement of members of his community, whom he has trained and employed since the early 1990s. Gateja envisions artists as agents for social, political, and environmental transformation, and art-making as an act of ecological and spiritual repair. Disrupting conventional distinctions between figuration and abstraction, and two-dimensional work and sculpture, the resulting swirling, mosaic-like pieces instead draw affective connections between people and their surroundings. Gateja lives in Kampala, Uganda.
Expressing Home [ In Splintered Reality ] an artist walk about with Pamela Enyonu, Artist talk with Martha Kazungu. A collaboration between Iraa - the Granary, Vodo Art Society and the Artist Pamela Enyonu. (The Food Basket 2)
"The exhibition “Ateker, ijasi biyayi? – Greetings from the road (A dedication)” marks a homecoming for Pamela Enyonu, being her first solo exhibition in the country. The exhibition includes older pieces as well as a completely new body of work that sets out to explore Ugandan history and self-understanding narrated through Enyonu’s particular gaze, in a country whose borders were drawn in someone else’s sketchbook. Based on readings as diverse as Okot p’Bitek’s “Songs of Lawino” through Maya Angelou, Chinua Achebe and Frantz Fanon (to only name a few) the artist’s works gaze into the shards of the broken mirror we like to call home – from its social interactions to its foundational myths." (as extracted from the website)
Image Credit: Hype media
Pamela Enyonu (b. 1985) is a Ugandan multimedia artist based in Kampala. Her practice probes identity, history, and gender complexities. In 2018, Enyonu received the inaugural Makumbya Musoke Art Prize. Since then she has workshopped, exhibited and done residencies in Africa, Europe and the UK, notably Africa 1:1 in Venice and the DKC Residency at York University (both 2023). Her work was featured in museum exhibitions such as Ca’ Pesaro Museum Venice (2023) where she confronted the idea of home in and as a foreign body for the first time. This not only enriched her experience on what it means to thrive as a black body moving through the world, it also enhanced her visual vocabulary. Her work was also featured at Makarere University Gal lery, Kampala (2023), Wolfsburg Museum (2022), as wel l as Africa 2020, Marseil le (2021). Enyonu’s work is part of notable public and private col lections, including the University of York Col lection (UK), Moleskine Foundation (Italy), Valmont Foundation (Switzerland), Woldburg Museum (Germany), and Ca’ Pesaro Museum (Italy)
Mapping the Unseen Artist Walk About with Piloya Irene (The Food Basket 3)
"Mapping the Unseen" delved into the profound and intricate exploration of memory, identity, and the concept of home. Through this exhibition, Piloya embarked on a journey to understand how memories_especially those shaped by displacement, upheaval, and drastic change_ reconstruct our sense of belonging. The works engage with themes of loss, adaptation and the fluid nature of what we call home, highting how our inner landscapes evolve in response to life's disruptions...", as extracted from the exhibition text
As part of our research into archival processes in artistic practices, the artist walk about with Piloya invited us to embrace personal curiosities with the work; its materiality, conceptual themes, titling, curatorial choices and so on.
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Image Credit: Brian Kasirye Dizney media
Piloya Irene is an artist and art teacher currently working between Kumasi, Ghana and Uganda. Piloya uses sculpture, painting and film to explore personal experience of displacement and its effects, memory and history in relation to place, identity and belonging. She has a Post Graduate Diploma in Art Education from Kyambogo University 2019, Bachelor's Degree in Industrial Fine Art and Design from Uganda Christian University 2016 and concluded a Master’s program in Painting and Sculpture at Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi-Ghana.