Ugandan Chief Ham Mukasa's Historic Notes Re-Interpreted

Earlier this month photography archive project HIPUganda (History In Progress Uganda) launched the second e-book in their Ebifananyi series, featuring the vintage Western Ugandan portraits of self-taught photographer Musa Katuramu. For their next project, HIPUganda turns to the archives of Ugandan chief Ham Mukasa (ca. 1870-1956). An early literate and Christian convert, Mukasa documented specific moments and phenomena from Ugandan history in a series of notes. HIPUganda co-creator Andrea Stultiens found a list of "described images" that should have accompanied Mukasa's notes on the reign of three kings of the Buganda Kingdom. Though in her research Stultiens found that these illustrations were never actually made. In Go Forward, Stultiens asks a group of Ugandan artists and art students to interpret Mukasa's notes. The instillation, which takes its name from the Luganda title of a book triptych written by Mukasa (Simuda Nyuma), spotlights a collection of photographs from the Mukasa family archive in addition to re-interpreted art from Stultiens' collaborators (Achola Flight Captain Rosario, Lwanga Emmanuel, Eria Nsubuga SANE, Nathan Omiel, Ian Mwesiga Ian, Papatrill SpokenWord, Sanaa Gateja and students from Uganda Christian University and Academy Minerva). The exhibition is on display now through December 12th at Academie Minerva in Groningen, Netherlands, and will likely continue to travel. Look for the Ham Mukasa volume of HIPUganda's Ebifananyi series to be published in July 2015.