Exhibition Overview
Laeïla Adjovi and Alexander Kyungu Mwilambwe link African pasts to new imagined futures. Through their work with rubber and cotton, they contend with borders and bodies. The materials are their storytelling agents, deployed to make social and environmental commentary on migration, agriculture, history, and heritage.
Bringing artwork from Benin and the Democratic Republic of the Congo to Uganda pays homage to shared histories of trade and production.
Uganda was once a vital place for cotton production. Today there are an estimated 250,000 Ugandan households that farm cotton. Comparatively, Benin is the largest African cotton producer with some harvest years yielding over 700,000 tons of cotton. Yet climate change and pesticide-led agrofarming threatens the largest export for the small West African nation. It is in this context that Adjovi works to portray the families whose livelihoods are derived from this ‘white gold’.
Rubber is a material that keeps the world in motion. Few places have been more defined by this material than the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Yet the violent colonial extraction of rubber is merely one history. Using discarded tyre inner tubes and tread, Kyungu Mwilambwe, works to make contemporary commentary on our globalised world.
For most of us, cotton and rubber are a part of our daily lives. This exhibition invites you to pause and reflect on material legacies while providing a visually arresting invitation towards beauty.
Exhibition Images
