Mathias Tusiime – Art and the Community

July 30, 2015

The raw energy in Tusiime’s paintings – compelling and revealing.

By George Kyeyune

Writing about Tusiime the artist is one of the most challenging things I have ever done. Tusiime is a combination of defiance and compliance- one can say in a sea of ambivalences, he has blossomed as one of Uganda’s best-known painters. He arrived at Makerere in 1999 to fill a post of a cleaner. His job was to clean and organize the studios and as he carried out these tasks, he was, at personal level, organizing and nurturing his artistic ambition. He interacted with art students and professors, observed, appreciated and respected their thoughts and processes but audaciously chose his own path and with compulsion pursued it. An experimental and naïve painter is now his badge of identity proudly displayed on his sleeves. Local and international collectors have acquired his work, art colleges in America and elsewhere have invited him to share his unique and individual experience and skills.

Mathias Tusiime
The Green venture, 2015
Acrylics on canvas, 55 x 40 cm

Tusiime arrived at a time the Makerere School of Industrial and Fine Arts was increasingly becoming more open minded and accommodative to alternative viewpoints. The earlier curriculum had stringently subscribed to academic rules of perspective, color theory and anatomy, moreover operating within a critical vacuum and without clear locally defined evaluative criteria. Such conditions could have locked out painters such as Tusiime. In the new dispensation, a stage was set for new perspectives in art some of which returned us to Trowell’s legacy. Trowell founded the Makerere Art School in the 40s with a mission of preserving what was relevant in the African cultural past and most of this was to be found in the rural subject matter.

A major retrospective exhibition of Jack Katarikawe Dreaming in Pictures at the Makerere Art Gallery in 2005 was a stark reminder of Trowell’s teaching philosophy. Katarikawe’s paintings can be characterized as naïve, loaded with humor and fantasy; stories are intrinsic to the picture- cows speak and behave like humans. Katarikawe’s artistic development was fostered in the late 60s at Makerere but outside the Makerere Art School. This was expected as his painting represented neo-traditional sensibilities, a reminder of Trowell, which the teaching system at the time did not favor. His triumphant return to Makerere Art School four decades later, demonstrated a new stance of inclusion and accommodation of multiple viewpoints. Little wonder, Tusiime felt safe and confident to pursue his ultimate goal as his ideas matched those of Katarikawe.

Matthias Tusiime,
Which Way, 2015
Acrylics on canvas, 56 x 29 cm

Remaining impervious to observation drawing and paying no attention to anatomy and perspective, Tusiime’s work draws on his childhood memories, which he paints with spontaneity and candor. Animals, plants and rural Uganda architecture are recurring motifs that crowd his canvases. His figures look out and gaze as if to challenge the observer. Tusiime’s distinctiveness is in the application of materials. He paints on hand made paper canvas which he himself makes by converting waste that he cleans up such as discarded paints, paper, which he combines with sugar cane pulp, hence contributing to the ongoing debate about application of indigenous materials in art at the School.

I must emphasize that, the wide range of exposure to different possibilities in art notwithstanding, Tusiime chose to follow Trowell’s path- a path which I argue is also pandered to by the Western audience and collectors. They desire and are prepared to pay for a certain kind of art that in some way conveys and connects with traditions inherited from the past; an ‘authentic’ African artist expressing naivety in African art. While I take naïve painting as legitimate in its own right, what I see happening as in this particular context unfortunately, is to perpetuate Western stereotypes of an African artist, lacking in sophistication and a continued emphasis on the notion of ‘the other’.

Matthias Tusiime,
In Between, 2015
Acrylics on canvas, 54 x 78 cm

Yet Tusiime’s paintings are of no less value just because they are conceived within the scope of Trowell’s teaching agenda. As a matter of fact, one of Tusiime’s major breakthroughs in the recent past is the knowledge transfer partnership he has established with the local communities. His experiments with paper production from recycled materials as well as painting from his heart have been shared with young often unemployed people of Kalerwe a poor neighborhood in the outskirts of Kampala. As well as realizing themselves through art, Tusiime’s protégés are able to earn an income from the sale of their work.

Just like his career, which emerged from obscurity to prominence, Uganda Community Art Skills Development and Recycling (UCSADR) an organization Tusiime created to support local communities using art, is set to become a formidable institution for poverty alleviation. What is more, Tusiime’s project is also stressing the need to clean up the environment through recycling.

Tusiime’s exhibition in the Makerere Institute of Heritage Conservation and Restoration is a proof of his resilience and tenacity. It is about a man who is prepared to overcome obstacles and take art to new directions and heights. He is confident and determined.

Follow the link below

 https://makerereartgallery.wordpress.com/2015/07/30/mathias-tusiime-art-and-the-community-2/