PILLARS OF RECTITUDE: WOMEN ARTISTS OF THE 1960S IN EAST AFRICA

Revisiting Graphic Styles through Estelle Betty Manyolo Sangowawa

Sangowawa Manyolo Estelle Betty (1938-1999) was a female Ugandan artist active in the 1960s as a painter and a printmaker. Inspired and introduced to art by her older brother, she first studied painting at Gayaza High School. Eventually she studied at the Margaret Trowell School of Fine Art and graduated in 1961 with a diploma in fine arts. She worked as an artist illustrating for the Health Ministry of Uganda, Entebbe creating various visual aids for the Department of Public Health and Hygiene. In 1961, Trowell’s predecessor Cecil Todd took Manyolo’s work to the Harmon Foundation in New York. Manyolo’s work drew inspiration from and depicted scenes from Ugandan local culture and folklore. Her style was deeply inspired by the decorative black and white house murals created by the Bahima people of western Uganda and the rock paintings found at Nyero and Kakoro in Eastern Uganda.

Charity Atukunda’s research makes an inquiry into what life was like for Manyolo in a male dominated industry and a developing young Uganda just a decade or so before its independence. Atukunda was also interested in what aspects of Manyolo’s life and work are parallel to hers as a female artist in Uganda – what has changed and what has stayed the same?

Re-reading Radical Futures in Rebeka Njau’s work

Rebeka Njau (b. 1932) is a Kenyan educator, writer and textile artist. Njau is widely considered to be Kenya’s first female playwright and a pioneer in the representation of African women in literature. Her play, The Scar, was published in Transition journal, and performed at the Uganda National Theatre in 1963. A second play, In the Round Chain, was performed at the same theatre in 1964, before being banned by the Ugandan government. Other works include the novels, The Sacred Seed, and Ripples in the Pool. The artist has also been published under the pseudonym Marina Gashe. Njau is included in the anthology Daughters of Africa, edited by Margaret Busby.

Violence casts a perpetual shadow over the characters in Njau’s writing. A deep patriarchal wound is rooted, and manifests across the dislocations of ‘traditional’ and (post)colonial worlds, explored within the author’s inquisition of women’s lives in Kenya. Liz Kobusinge’s research proposes witnessing Njau’s auto-fictive memorialization of women’s suffering, while following textual cues of radical remaking offered within the worlds represented.

The work suggests a co-reading of ‘The Scar’ and ‘The Sacred Seed’, to illustrate healing pathways and solidarity between Mariana, Noni and Mumbi. Kobusinge draws inspiration from radical futures presupposed within indigeneity, as well as a responsibility to the earth prescribed by African cosmologies, to envision an installation of video on hand-made bark cloth and paper as a ritual of both remembrance and manifestation.

Resilient Art Practice of Rosemary Karuga

Rosemary Namuli Karuga (1928 - 2021) was a visual artist born in Meru, Kenya. She was the first woman to graduate from the Margaret Trowell School of Industrial and Fine Art at Makerere University after which she practiced teaching in Kenya until her retirement. Karuga became a full time artist in her sixties with an approach in paper collage art. Through art, she addressed socio-political themes like poverty, gender inequality, cultural heritage and education, while depicting pastoral and domestic African scenes.

Viola Nimuhamya’s research focused on reclaiming Karuga’s art practice to honor her legacy and continue her impact on young female artists. Nimuhamya sought to reflect Karuga’s resilience in remaining in the art field even though she was growing older, blind and deaf as well as maneuvering through a world of art ruled by men.

Reflecting on Theresa Musoke’s Aesthetic Philosophy

Theresa Musoke (b. 1944) self-describes as a semi-abstract artist, who experiments across painting and printmaking. Using a variety of mediums she doesn’t conform to colors or even styles as her practice is ever-changing and responds to her observations. She is most known for her distinctive paintings of wildlife but her portfolio also comprises batik, lithography and sculpture.

Letaru Dralega’s research interest lay in documenting Musoke, to capture an oral history of some of the pivotal moments in her practice and career, while reflecting on Letaru’s own interest in memory, archive, embodied knowledge and sound. Her audio-visual presentation mapped the terrain of Musoke’s life, drawing from elements of her unique aesthetic to form an experimental biography and portrait of the artist’s life which reflects her aesthetic philosophy.