Bulungi Bwansi
Exhibition Title: Bulungi Bwansi
Exhibition Type: Collaborative Public Installation, Multi-Site Showcase & Zine Launch
Organising Festival: KLA ART 24 (5th Edition)
Producing Institution: 32° East | Ugandan Arts Trust.
Venue/Locations: Displayed across various public locations of the KLA Arts Festival, Kampala, Uganda
Year: 8th - 24th August 2024
Key Collaborators: Photographer/Researcher Jim Joel Nyakaana, Writer Claire Balungi, and a Collective of Basket Weavers from Fort Portal led by natural dye specialist Patrick Tungo Apuuli
Medium: Collaborative Zine, Color Photography, Coffee Sketches/Stains, Botanical Illustrations, and Organic Banana Fiber Framing
Bulungi Bwansi (a Luganda term translating to "community service" or "for the good of the country") functions as an open-air visual chronicle of East African cultural heritage and collaborative artistic innovation. Produced for the KLA ART 24 public art festival, the project treats the concept of Bulungi Bwansi not as a historic relic, but as an active, living rallying cry for modern communities to independently address their collective socio-economic needs and ecological challenges.
The project breaks away from rigid, institutional gallery frameworks to explore alternative approaches to contemporary art documentation. Developed through a deep-tissue artistic residency, the mixed-media series pairs contemporary color photography with organic coffee sketches. The core visual lexicon relies on vibrant colors, botanical dyes, and intricate structural shapes handcrafted by a specialized collective of basket weavers from Fort Portal, under the artistic leadership of master dye specialist Patrick Tungo Apuuli.
Materiality as Ritual and Network
To deepen its material anthropology, the installation and accompanying publication integrate organic elements layered with deep intergenerational symbolism:
The Coffee Ritual (Okuta Omukaago): The artworks incorporate deliberate coffee stains and raw illustrations that evoke the ancient regional ritual of forging blood brotherhoods and sacred community bonds through coffee seeds. This visual anchoring extends beyond Buganda boundaries to neighboring kingdoms, highlighting a shared pre-colonial solidarity. The physical coffee stains surrounding the basket imagery symbolise the vast, unseen networks of mutual aid sustaining the weavers.
Banana Fiber Curation: Every artwork is framed in organic banana fiber—the historic material traditionally utilized to wrap, preserve, and transport coffee seeds across historical trade routes.
Featured artworks:
By juxtaposing tactile portraits of the artisans' hands alongside these indigenous materials, Bulungi Bwansi transforms the spaces of the KLA ART 24 festival into an interactive public laboratory. The final presentation celebrates the direct interplay of community, raw craft, and memory, weaving traditions into immediate, contemporary efforts toward regional preservation and environmental sustainability.
Installation Views:
