all photos by author except where otherwise noted
In this article I reexamine the ways in which certain contemporary artists based in Uganda problematize the narrative that the ruling National Resistance Movement (the NRM) party is the party of the rural poor (Cheeseman, Lynch, and Willis 2016) in their work while using it as a metaphor to inform their visual expression. I focus on the contest between tradition (imagined as a village) and modernity (imagined as a modern state), as well as the dilemma such a contest causes for a contemporary artist. Cornelius Adepegba (1995) argues that this dilemma influenced the African novel. Agreeing with Adepegba, Freeborn Odiboh (2009) observes that the same dilemma has shaped African visual artists, such as Abayomi Barber, and formal art education institutions like the Barber School in Nigeria; Odiboh then assesses the historical context in which this dilemma evolved as African nationalists...