COLLIN SEKAJUGO AT THE 59TH VENICE BIENNALE 2022

In Uganda’s first national pavilion at the Venice Biennale, two artists from Kampala, Uganda, Acaye Kerunen and Collin Sekajugo, present their work, in an exhibition entitled, "Radiance - They Dream in Time". The Uganda's pavilion curated by Shaheen Merali, won a Special mentions as National Participations 'in acknowledgement of their vision, ambition and commitment to art and working in their country.'

Collin Sekajugo approaches his work from a distinct, aesthetic departure point that resides in his repeated return to pop culture and the omnipresent influence exuded by the global mainstream, conversing and critiquing its many biases across visual, oral and digital cultures. Since 2012, Sekajugo has worked with the manipulation of the common stock image to reveal its inherent biases of entitlement and privilege largely modelled on the Western self. Sekajugo’s artistic practice highlights a contemporaneous anthropological reversal of this mainstream culture through the lens of a decidedly African sense for irreverence and play on the ad-hoc. Conceptually, the works of Sekajugo become pure theatre, a hacking of identity that exposes some truths behind these stock images that quietly continue to colonise the entire globe by the weight of their own popularity.