Public-making in a pandemic: The role of street art in East African countries.

Street artists around the world have been prominent in depicting issues concerning COVID-19, but the role of street art in public-making during the pandemic is unexplored. Despite burgeoning street art scenes in many African countries since the early 2000s, African street art is relatively neglected in critical street art scholarship. In response, this paper examines street art created during the pandemic in East African countries, principally Uganda, Kenya, Rwanda, and Tanzania, and explores the ways in which it is engaged in highly distinctive forms of public-making. Drawing primarily on qualitative online interviews with East African artists creating street art, and image analysis using online search tools, the paper argues that street art in urban areas is attempting to create knowledgeable publics through countering disinformation about the pandemic, to responsiblize publics through public health messaging and, through community activism, to build resilient publics. The paper concludes that street art is potentially an important tool in tackling the COVID-19 pandemic in East African countries due to the proximity, and mutual constitution of, creative practices and publics, which emerge from the embedding of street art within the social spaces of cities and everyday experiences of the pandemic.

Keeping Safe From COVID-19, 2020

In the 2018 series Dreams and Consequences, I navigated the subject of behavioral norms by studying the practices of young people on university campuses. In her artistic practice, Nabulime uses ordinary objects such as soap, sieves, clothing, mirrors, cans, metal parts of cars, and other found materials to address specific social issues related to disease, gender, and the environment. Nabulime has been awarded numerous fellowships, including the Commonwealth Fellowship Award (UK, 1997, 2012), Robert Sterling Fellowship, Vermont Studio Center (USA, 2011), African Stones Talk Sculpture Symposium (Kenya, 2011), British Academy International Visiting Fellowship (UK, 2009 and 2008, and a Residency Award by Mind Power Projects at the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) and Living Classrooms in Baltimore, Maryland (2015).