Healing in times of women
At the end, the exhibition doesn’t pretend pain is over. Instead, it shows the work of healing: letting go, resting, and remembering.
Olivia Namara’s Drink with Me at the ‘Healing’ exhibition at the Njabala Foundation art space in Nakwero. (Photo by Kalungi Kabuye)
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If any group needs healing, it’s women. History has for long treated them as property, as second-class citizens, and every step toward equality has come with a fight. That’s years of pain to carry. So how does a woman, and an artist, deal with it?
That’s the question behind the Njabala Foundation’s 5th Annual Njabala Exhibition (ANE), ‘Healing’, currently showing at their space in Nakwero, just past Gayaza.
The Njabala Foundation was founded by curator Martha Kazungu with the goal of challenging gender inequality in the art world by using the Njabala myth to put women artists at the centre. The Njabala myth, from Buganda, is about a girl who got married but didn’t know how to ‘take care of her man’; so, she called on the ghost of her mother to help her.
Five exhibitions have since been held, with the inaugural ‘This Is Not How’ in 2022. Others have been ‘Holding Space’ (2023), ‘An Elegy’ (2024), and ‘Obulo Bwaffe’ (2025). In March this year, they hosted the first exhibition at their new home. ‘Karibu’ featured the traditional Ganda art of mat making.
Sarafina ‘Kengi’ Kebirungi’s Bird Song Alert: Kuku-kulu-kuku on display at the ‘Healing’ exhibition at the Njabala Foundation art space in Nakwero. (Photo by Kalungi Kabuye)
‘Healing’, which opened on Saturday, August 1, is the Foundation’s boldest yet, exploring the fact that pain has always been part of being a woman: from monthly periods, to childbirth, to the daily fight for equality.
Walking in on Monday morning, the first thing I felt was the quiet. The space was empty except for Nancy, who offered to walk me around. I kindly declined, and that silence made it even more profound.
Then there is Aliba Linda Suzan’s work, made from plastic tops on cardboard. You can’t help but feel the long, painstaking minutes she spent putting the pieces together. According to the catalogue, the bottle tops ‘… symbolise change and rebirth… they represent things that have been used, rejected, and forgotten. By transforming them into art, she reflects the healing process of turning pain, loss, or brokenness into strength, beauty, purpose and new beginnings’. Really impressive.
But it is the two setups in the next room that really grab you. First is ‘To Heal is to Plant a Seed’, four pieces by Laruni Mary Diana, inspired by the development of the maize plant. Using hand-stitched maize husks, she traces the development of the maize plant from germination to fruition. Only it is in reverse order, with germination the largest of the pieces and fruition the smallest. The catalogue explains that the artist uses the pieces to parallel stages of grief — denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. That probably explains the reverse order, because grief arrives full-blown, but gradually shrinks, with one’s spirits lifting, till it breaks out with acceptance.
Olivia Namara’s ‘Drink with Me’ is a sculpture made from metal, banana fibre, bark cloth, and raffia. Its sense of welcoming, service and affection would sit well in a modern-day boardroom.
Sarafina ‘Kengi’ Kebirungi’s ‘Bird song alert: Kuku-kulu-kuku’ literally takes your breath away, and I bet quite a few people had to pick their jaws off the floor on seeing it. She interprets birdsong by hand-stitching milk cotton threads onto panels of wire mesh, converting frequencies into waveforms. Each of the nine pieces represents a different song. Njabala does not put prices on the works (I’m not even sure if they are on sale), but I bet these pieces would fetch a very pretty penny. And rightly so.
At the end, the exhibition ( which is in two ‘constellations’, with the second showing from August 15) doesn’t pretend pain is over. Instead, it shows the work of healing: letting go, resting, and remembering.