A Temporary Exhibition
Exhibition Title: A Temporary Exhibition
Exhibition Type: Collaborative Group Exhibition & Interactive Installation
Organizing Network: Development Alternatives
Venue: Uganda National Museum, Kampala, Uganda
Dates: March 5th – 9th, 2020
Key Collaborators: Photographer Jim Joel, Sculptor Shohrab Jahan, Filmmaker Emilie Flower, Poet Dr. Susan Kiguli, and Researcher Ruth Kelly
Medium: Conceptual Photography / Archive Activation, Interactive Installation, Soundscape, and Sculpture
Research Basis: Academic text analysis referencing Margaret Trowell's 1953 Tribal Crafts of Uganda alongside intensive, hands-on cataloging inside the museum vaults.
Artwork Description: Large-scale photographic prints isolating individual spearheads from the museum's collection. By capturing the extreme diversity of historical craftsmanship, these visual assets challenge modern national borders, evoke deep childhood memories, and push audiences to question the origins, preservation, and ownership of historic African artifacts.
A Temporary Exhibition brought together an international network of artists, activists, and academics inside the permanent galleries of the Uganda National Museum. Running from March 5th to March 9th, 2020, this collaborative experiment placed fragile, impermanent artworks directly against the museum's fixed archives to activate public imagination and explore expanding civic spaces.
Featured artworks: The Spear Archive Series
As part of his broader photography practice, Jim Joel worked closely with museum archivists to uncover and recontextualize historic artifacts stored away from public view.
The exhibition functioned as a living laboratory, intentionally displaying works without traditional descriptive labels to let visitors generate their own interpretations. Audiences, including hundreds of local schoolchildren, actively participated by removing their shoes to walk along an indoor clay path, touching a melting, burning life-sized wax sculpture, and listening to an atmospheric poetic soundscape. By disrupting institutional conventions, the collaborative project sparked raw, meaningful dialogues on personal memory, the value of structural conservation, and what local histories we choose to preserve.
Installation views
