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Dr. Lilian Mary Nabulime: Embodying Social Being curated by Dr. Lilian Mary Nabulime and Basak Tarman

2024; UCLA James S. Coleman African Studies Center; Volume: 57; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1162/afar_r_00756

1937-2108

Helena Cantone,

African studies and sociopolitical issues

For one brief week a selection of sculptures by the Ugandan artist Dr. Lilian Nabulime were on display in Somerset House. The exhibition featured wooden sculptures on loan from Newcastle University; a group of figurative reliefs developed with the Royal Overseas League Travel Fellowship during a one-month residency at the Patrick Alan Fraser Foundation in Scotland in 2008; a collection of delicate soap sculptures representing female and male genitalia and terracotta heads brought over from Uganda by the artist. Together these pieces represent a large body of Dr. Nabulime's socially engaged artwork, which raises awareness around sexual health, HIV/AIDS, and women's issues.Nabulime's exhibition was held in one of the smaller rooms of this neoclassical Georgian building, featuring stripped wooden floorboards, two large sash windows, and two fireplaces. A difficult space to use, as the director of operation explained. The curators had to make free-standing panels to display the reliefs, so as not to touch the walls of the listed building. The soap sculptures were placed on the mantlepiece on one side of the room and the terracotta heads on the other to use all the available surface, while the wooden sculptures Unity (2004) and Twisted Woman (2008) were spread out on the floor space (Fig. 1).Somerset House is famous for hosting the yearly global art fair of Contemporary African and Diasporic art 1-54, now in its tenth year running. In contrast to this large-scale event, Nabulime's exhibition was small and intimate and refreshing in its focus on the artist and her practice. The organizer of the exhibition, the Almas Art Foundation, is a new UK-based nonprofit organization, whose purpose is to highlight the contribution of African and diaspora artists to modern and contemporary visual arts by working in collaboration with artists, documenting their work and sharing their practice with a wider audience. This represents a new way of collaborating and presenting artists which is not confined to the commercial global art market model.Nabulime's figurative sculptures, with their distorted faces, twisted bodies, and exaggerated proportions, organically flow with the tree trunk shapes, textures, and grain to form quasi-otherworldly figures (Fig. 2). Yet they also represent very worldly beings, who seem to carry the psychological trauma of those living with HIV/AIDS and are ostracized within society. Some sculptures are layered with paint and objects including screws, bolts, and metal sheets nailed into the wood, symbolizing a form of armor—or protection, perhaps—and representing the invisible emotional impact the virus has on families and communities. The use of different media, including recycled and reclaimed materials from both the natural and material world, points to the artist's method of working and wider ecological concerns.Bright red lips are a dominant theme in Nabulime's work, drawing attention to lips as a sensual and sensory organ and a dangerous vehicle of communication that can curse and shame. This theme was captured in the terracotta heads entitled The Rumormongers (2018) with their elongated necks, wide-open mouths, and painted lips, representing gossipers who spread taboos around HIV/AIDS in the community (Fig. 3). Indeed, Dr. Lilian's own experiences of isolation while she cared for her husband dying of HIV/AIDS, and the lack of support and information regarding the virus, compelled her to create artworks around these issues. She travelled to the UK and obtained a PhD in 2007 from Newcastle University with her dissertation The Role of Sculptural Forms as a Communication Tool in Relation to the Lives and Experiences of Women with HIV/AIDS in Uganda.You sense that sculpting is very much part of Nabulime's personal process of working through grief, after having lost both her father and husband to HIV/AIDS. Despite this, Nabulime's fighting spirit and her ability to communicate sensitive, uncomfortable, and embarrassing topics with others gives her artwork a unique performative power. This educational element of her practice as an artist-activist is exemplified most poignantly by the small, portable Male and Female Soap Sculptures (20032004) created in the shapes of penises and vulvas to reach some of the most remote communities in Uganda (Figs. 4-5).These translucent, glycerine-based abstract sculptures, with different colors and textures including cowrie shells and seeds inserted into the objects, represent the various stages of the HIV/AIDS infection. Very much like object-handling in museum contexts, Dr. Nabulime uses these soap genitalia as a talking-point to break down social barriers. As the artist recalls: "When they looked at the penises and vaginas in the form of soap sculptures embedded with objects, they laughed. It was a terrifying subject, but people were holding them and laughing" (2003: 5).Art as pedagogy is what drives Dr. Nabulime to keep reaching new audiences - women, girls, and young people in particular. The exhibition displayed wooden reliefs entitled Kigongo and Kizza (2009) representing tall, slender women wearing crop tops, short skirts, and high heels made from textured metal sheets and recycled drink cans (Fig. 6). Two children, entitled Babirye and Nakato (2009), were shown in pigtails with expressions of innocence stamped on their faces. Keys placed in the center of their faces instead of noses remind adults that we have the responsibility to keep children safe—referring to children born with HIV/AIDS.I had the great pleasure of meeting Dr. Nabulime at the exhibition. She was generous with her time and talked about her artworks very much like a storyteller who draws people into the story, sharing important life lessons with the listeners as gifts to take away.Dr. Nabulime (b. 1963) follows in the footsteps of the great master-sculptors before her. She trained in Fine Arts under Professors Musango Gwantamu and Francis Nnaggenda at the Department of Fine Arts at the Margaret Trowell School at Makerere University in Kampala. Nabulime graduated in 1987 and began teaching in the department in 1988, where she still is senior lecturer today. Dr. Nabulime's former students include Leilah Babirye (b. 1985), whose monumental sculptures, use of everyday objects, and confidence in addressing issues of identity, sexuality, and human rights in the current anti-gay climate in Uganda, clearly links to Dr. Nabulime's work. As Francis Nnaggenda reflected in a personal interview with Wanjiku Nyachae, "Destruction exists but the spirit must survive—amputated but still full of resistance" (1995: 177). Resilience and political activism seem to link generations of Ugandan artists together.Linked to Nabulime's exhibition at Somerset House, a talk was organized with the artist in collaboration with the Almas Art Foundation, SOAS, and guest speakers including Martha Kazungu, providing an intimate portrait of Nabulime and her practice. The exhibition is accompanied by a monograph published by the Almas Art Foundation, the first in a series of books which will be presented alongside future exhibitions organized by the foundation. A documentary film on Nabulime is freely available on the foundation's website: http://www.almasartfoundation.org.