General
Source: The Observer
In this dry season when the arts scene is hit hard by the January blues, receiving an invite to the opening of Amanda Tumusiime's art exhibition at the Margaret Trowell School of Industrial and Fine Arts was such a saviour.
As an art enthusiast, I told my editor to expect something refined from me. But as soon as I stood in front of the first of her paintings, I realised I was the wrong journalist for the job. And the more I advanced along her oil-on-canvas paintings, the more I could only see hints of blobs and splotches in hues of blue, black and white. I'm more of a direct picture kind of girl. If the painting is titled 'Girl in Car', I expect to see a girl in a car, all details intact, down to the colour of her eyes.
Perhaps, Tumusiime's work required a viewer of a slightly higher intellectual capacity than mine. However, what I lacked in understanding the paintings themselves, I more than made up for in appreciating what they signified, politically and historically.
Take, for example, one series of paintings: The Long Stride. Amanda was inspired by giant steps women have made since 1986. Also touched upon was the advancement of the department for Women in Development into a full ministry headed by a woman minister, Joyce Mpanga, in 1991. Interesting; I didn't know that!
Or The Graduate, a series that praises the NRM regime for revising the education policy for women, insisting that women and men should have similar educational opportunities. Apparently, the number of women enrolled at university had risen to 40% by 1996. I didn't know that either!
I was pleased, finally, to find that I had arrived at the last of her paintings; not because I was confused to death but because the last was a series named after the entire exhibition itself: Shattered Glass Ceiling: Visualizing Women's Emancipation – A History.
Shattered Glass Ceiling recalls Uganda's 1970s to 1980s history, demonstrating that women's participation in open rebellion contradicted traditional stereotypes of keeping women away from the front line of mainstream political debates.
Olivia Zizinga, Gertrude Njuba and Proscovia Nalweyiso were mothers, as well as good combatants who actively fought battles within the NRM. Once more, I looked hard at the paintings, determined to be enlightened. I only saw more squidges and hues. I was consoled when I heard a young man behind me telling his friend: ''Bannange.
Am I the only one who has failed to click these paintings?''
Maybe you will do better. The exhibition, which opened last Friday runs until January 25.