Action and live art in Uganda
Artist and Performance Art Groups
Information, resources, and more
- UGANDA NATIONAL CULTURAL CENTRE – The Uganda National Cultural Centre (UNCC), a semi-autonomous body under the Ministry of Gender, Labour, and Social Development, was established by the UNCC 1959 Act of Parliament (Amended 1965) on October 8, 1959, and officially inaugurated on December 2, 1959. UNCC’s mandate is to preserve, promote, develop, and popularize Uganda’s culture in Uganda and beyond (Internationally). UNCC continues to be an iconic institution in Uganda where a number of artists have been groomed.
- Bayimba International Festival of the Arts (founded 2008, Kampala) — Uganda’s major multidisciplinary festival spanning music, dance, theatre, film, and visual arts; regularly commissions performance-based installation backdrops and street-theatre training.
- Kampala Art Biennale (founded 2014) — regional platform showcasing multidisciplinary practice including performance.
- Kampala street theatre / LaBa! Arts Festival — grassroots platforms training performers like Richard Kasozi in participatory street theatre.
- Angelo Kakande, Art and the “Ghost” of “Military Dictatorship”: Expressions of Dictatorship in Post-1986 Contemporary Ugandan Art, Start Journal: Contemporary Art on the African Continent, 2016 – In this article I engage this proposition to re-examine selected artworks in the context of Uganda’s socio-political history in the period 1986-2016 – a period of Uganda’s history dominated by the ruling National Resistance Movement (also called the NRM). During this examination, I borrow lenses from political theory, critical theory and visual culture studies to write Uganda’s art history.
- Uganda’s Artistic Renaissance: Emerging trends in contemporary art, The Independent, 3/12/2024