Exhibitions

This page presents a selection of exhibitions, installations, and public presentations featuring Jim Joel’s work across photography, sculpture, and research-led practice. Grounded in walking, memory, and material heritage, these projects span gallery spaces, public walkways, and community archives.

Above: Jim Joel standing beside a photo essay from his 2022 body of work Akalimu , exhibited in Kampala,Uganda.

My work begins with unplanned city walks that lead to photographic essays, installations, and archival interventions. I explore how histories live in architecture, cinema spaces, and everyday materials like bark cloth, clay, and craft textiles—mapping connections between people, places, and cultural memory.

Each project is a conversation between past and present, blurring the boundaries between documentation and imagination, personal experience and collective history.

Recent works include Chai and Cinemas (2025, Kampala), which reflected on Uganda’s film culture and informal cafés; Bulungi Bwansi (KLA Art Festival, 2024), exploring urban care and heritage through participatory mapping; and Kampala Road Unveiled (2024, Johannesburg), a photo essay on colonial urban planning and shifting narratives.

Whether in Uganda or abroad, I approach exhibitions as spaces of encounter—inviting viewers to remember, retrace, and reimagine the layered histories embedded in our cities.