Repairing Representational Wounds: Artistic and Curatorial Approaches to Transition After War

Abstract

This paper interrogates the wounds inflicted by the representation of the war between the Lord’s Resistance Army and the Government of Uganda. The paper presents Kanyo, Love and Gang Kikome and Other Things We Left Behind, artistic works within the exhibition When We Return, as a staging ground to interrogate symbolic repair. Gang Kikome and Other Things We Left Behind is an artwork-as-archive of items that were used by the inhabitants of settlement camps during the war between the LRA and the GoU but that were left behind once the camps were disbanded. The objects are a materiality of humanitarian aid; the artwork presents these objects of assistance as cultural artefacts. Kanyo, Love is an artwork about the aftermath of war through an exploration of the courtship gifts received by former wives of the LRA. The work critiques the silencing of affect in the frozen-in-time narrative of forced marriage and abduction that are superimposed onto the women. Curating the work as a knowledge register adds artistic and curatorial knowledge to existing research, reporting and archives on the war. It inserts artwork in the voids within the heritagisation of Uganda’s conflict past.