Art in the Time of War
By Wangari Mungai
Gulu town, about 400 kilometres north of
Constant in searing heat, Gulu is a place of contrasts, a display of affluence and power on the one hand, with big four-wheel drive vehicles cruising up and down the town. On the other hand are endless rows of huts, crammed with thousands of Internally Displaced People, the ideal scene of human desperation.
Everyone in Gulu has a story to tell. Many still tell of how they escaped the fighting from their villages at night or how they lost a limb from an exploding land mine or in the hands of the ruthless LRA rebels.
But with the start of the Juba peace talks between the rebels and the Uganda government last year August, there has been relative calm in Northern Uganda and the people are beginning to restructure their lives and hoping to return to their villages.
Nevertheless, the last two decades of war and brutalities will never be forgotten, at least not by the Acholi people.
Through their art, whether intentionally or not, artists in Gulu have been telling the story of the two-decade war and its effects on the people here. It is evident through the paintings and musical instruments that are found in the two workshops that African colours visited in Gulu town. It’s either the story of a grim past or of a long-for peaceful future.
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Gabriel Odong-Kara Ochieng, a painter and a fine artist, has partnered with other fine artists in Gulu and has opened the Complex Art and Design Studio. From the small space they have here, they make sculptures, do commissioned portraits or paintings and earn their living.
“Our art will mainly have a message,” says Gabriel. “We not only talk about the war but we also talk about the things affecting the people of Gulu like domestic violence against women, things that the people who live here can identify with”
But political art is not all they do here.
“I like to think of myself as a fine artist,” says the soft spoken artist. “I like to give messages through my art, my paintings, be they political or otherwise. The most important thing to me and to my colleagues is imagination” Ochieng pauses, and quoting Einstein, he adds, “Imagination is more important than knowledge. Our survival depends on our imagination. We have to imagine the unimagined, to create something that will appeal to people who are not necessarily inclined to love art. And that is a difficult task”
Hanging on the wall is a portrait of a young woman. Gabriel explains that she is from
“These kinds of orders are our main source of income. The population here does not care about an abstract painting. And that we perfectly understand. If you can hardly put a meal on your table, what would you care about an abstract painting or about any form of art at that?”
But art, being a form of documentation and a means of social commentary, Gabriel and his colleagues feel that they owe it to their society to document the happenings that have characterised their lives for the past two decades.
“But for some reason, it is outsiders that buy most of our political art. Perhaps that has to do with the fact that the locals would rather forget the war and move on with their lives. On the other hand, some of the people who buy our representations of the Northern Uganda conflict are people who use our art to raise funds abroad for the IDPs, for the many orphans here and the many social problems facing the population here,” he says. “We have also had university lecturers buy some of out ‘conflict’ art for use as teaching aids”
While Gabriel has taken on documenting the conflict through art, 29-year old Denis Olet has taken art to a therapeutic level. Denis is a handicraftsman who works with wood. Denis prefers to make traditional wood musical instruments because he hopes there is music in the future of the Acholi people.
“Making the ‘Bull’ and the ‘Adung’ is something that I picked up when I was still in vocational training,” says Denis. (The Bull resembles a xylophone while the Adung is a one stringed instrument, common in many African cultures)
“I am not a musician, in fact -other than being able to tune them- I cannot even play most of the instruments that I make,” he says with a chuckle. “But music was a big part of who the Acholi people were before the war. The war seem to have stolen that part of our culture and we have to reclaim it”
Like it is for Gabriel, business is not easy to come by for Denis either. “For my instruments, I sell most of them during the schools’ music festivals. The students come over to my workshop and place orders now that they know I make the instruments. I also make one-off sales to visitors who get curious about the instruments and want to self train to play them”
Denis however can not live on the little money he makes from the sale of the instruments. He has had to decide between doing art for the sake of art or going into functional art because it pays his bills. Well, in this part of the world, this kind of dilemma is all too common and the decision not so hard to make. “I have had to go into carpentry now. Furniture and household goods sell more and faster. In this regard, furniture is what I do to survive but making the instruments is what I do for the love of it”
Unlike Gabriel, Denis was directly affected by the war, losing his father who had been abducted by the LRA rebels and dying soon after being let go. “What I feel about the war is a personal affair for me. I know for sure that we need peace in order to do any kind of successful business in this region. I do not want to have to move elsewhere. This is where I want to work. I hope to even go back to my village some day – if only we can trust in our politicians to do the right thing for everyone affected by this”
Both Gabriel and Denis hope that their work will cross over the Gulu borders and sell in other part of
Thus remains the state of art in this war-ravaged region of