I have the enormous privilege of being part of the stellar Healing Justice London (HJL) Justice and Pembroke House team and together we are researching the health, belonging and wellbeing needs of local Walworth residents, so we can co-create a social model for health.
Read MorePodcast: Healing Through Ancestral Wisdom and Movement
I was delighted to join Guilia on Terra Stories to discuss why I make art to understand myself through my culture and our ancestral regenerative wisdom.
Birungi's journey starts with her ancestors, who always found inspiration in nature for their creative work.
🌿 Through the use of banana tree fibers, bark cloth, and batik techniques native to Uganda, they crafted various forms of art that shaped her childhood.
🌱 This left her with a profound respectful relationship with the natural world, driving her to revisit these traditions and incorporate them into her own life, leading her to become a collage artist and art tutor.
🌿 Influenced by her roots, nature, Black feminism, and Afro-somatic movement, Birungi employs her art as a means to explore ways of achieving well-being within a community.
🌱 How did Birungi's origins impact her childhood? Why did she choose natural materials for her art, inspired by her ancestral traditions? How can this art promote healing?
Dive into the vibrant colors, textures, and movement of Birungi's mindful art as we explore these questions and more in this episode.
What does equity and solidarity mean to you? Saying no to lazy BHM requests
I build equitable partnerships with organisations who value my work, because I conduct research and deliver mental health informed art wellbeing programmes all year round. This takes time. If you're approaching me for the first time for a BHM workshop, then you probably don't see me and what I can do for your people. And that's OK! I am may not be for you.
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Birungi at Walworth Living Room.
How Can We Support Community Health? Launching "Weaving Interdependence" Health Research and Quilt Archival Research Project
I am delighted to be commissioned by Healing Justice London and Pembroke House to design and deliver the community health research project, "Weaving Interdependence", part of a "Healthy Exchange". Calling Walworth and Southwark residents! Over a series of workshops, I will hold space for creative rest and sensory play with plant fibres, African textiles and collage as we share hopes for health, wellbeing, joy, safety and healing.
Read MoreReflections...
REFLECTIONS - What would the past version of you from 10 years ago, say about you now?
Comment on instagram or email me…
What a difference decade makes. 10 years ago, baby Birungi (29 and 6 months), was preparing to leave a job in which she was bullied because the City of London was built on exploiting labour based on gender and ethnicity.
She would be really proud of me for researching and using variety of wellbeing methodologies and speaking openly about mental health issues for minoritised people. I think baby Birungi would be particularly grateful to be a full time artist, encouraging individuals, students, corporate teams and local boroughs to promote wellbeing.
Over the past decade, I've explored the roots of depression and anxiety with counselling, psychodynamic therapy, psychiatry, CBT and collage art making.
My perspective has revealed to me that through exploring African textiles, paper and natural fibres, I am piecing together my identity and accepting all of me, as the disabled, African, working class woman who has never formally trained in art. I've gone from making friends birthday cards to confidently depicting myself in life size portraiture. Slowing down with hashtag#meditation, nature and learning from so many health practitioners has supercharged my growth and my hashtag#mindset.
What would the version of you 10 years ago think of who you are and what you're doing now? Please leave a comment or drop me a message.
Evening Standard | The best free exhibitions in London
How can art support your self care practice?
Does anyone else need a reminder to take a break? I am so grateful that through art making, I can reflect on my needs and commit to taking better care of myself.
I reflect on self care, how I am learning to listen to my body with respect, whilst on my residency with Njabala Foundation and 32° East | Ugandan Arts Trust.
How can art help you to understand yourself?
My names, Birungi (which means "good") and Ndwadde (which means "I am sick") used to puzzle me. No one can tell me why our Jajja (Grandmother) named me this way. Engaging in art has given me confidence to make sense of my name and my identities as a British Ugandan woman with a disability. It is through the periods of sickness (depression and anxiety, brain fog, intense pain in my neck, back and jaw and teeth grinding) that I have had reorient my life to become well (good).
Read MoreGratitude
GRATITUDE - Thank you Njabala Foundation and 32° East for helping a very anxious woman to find her voice in her home country, when I didn't feel like I could be myself in either the UK or Uganda. Now I am back in London, I feel more British and Ugandan. I claim my identities for myself, I am no longer waiting for approval.
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Public Art Commission: Black Womxn At Rest mural
Curated by Black Blossoms in partnership with Kensington and Chelsea Art Week, we, Bokani and Birungi Kawooya collaborated on a mural that portrays Black womxn in a state of relaxation against a mesmerizing backdrop.
We aimed to skillfully depict our subjects' peaceful and serene moments amidst an entrancing setting, creating a captivating atmosphere that heightens the contemplative mood of the piece. Through our art, we sought to showcase the beauty and importance of rest and rejuvenation in the lives of Black womxn. The mural invites the viewer to immerse themselves in the dreamy and thought-provoking world that we have created.
To learn more about the project, you can read our full interview on the Black Blossoms Journal.
This project is funded by Untold Stories, part of the Mayor of London’s Commission for Diversity in the Public Realm.
“I wanted to take a moment to express my heartfelt thanks for collaborating with Black Blossoms last year. The impact of your mural on Freston Road is still resonating, providing both residents and passersby with ample opportunities for contemplation on the themes of rest and reflection.
On a personal note, last year marked the first summer I deliberately stepped back from actively pursuing new projects. It was a challenging period – tears were shed, my body felt weary, and my mind raced incessantly. Amidst these struggles, I contemplated the call to Black womxn to rest and reflect. I realised that, despite the systemic barriers rooted in capitalism, a more profound internal wall existed – a feeling of unworthiness to prioritise self-care, fill my cup, and embark on a healing journey from within.
Following the installation of your mural and as I started to decline new work, I embarked on a transformative journey encompassing fitness, health, and, most importantly, rest. Bokani and Birungi, your artistic expression advocating for
Black womxn to embrace rest brought me to a heightened state of consciousness, a realisation that only became apparent during my reflections in 2023.
”
32° East Ugandan Arts Trust Open Studio: A Space For Rest
A space for rest
Breathe in, slowly
Lay, sit and rest with me.
Reflect on your past
Be still in the present and
Imagine your future
Protect your dreamspace
A Sisters Need Sleep installation
Read More"Rest in Time and Space: Birungi Kawooya" By Gloria Kiconco
It’s easy to take the abundance of local materials available in Uganda for granted. But for Birungi Kawooya, a Ugandan-British artist based in the UK, staple materials like lubogo (bark cloth) and banana fibre were not previously available. They were materials she grew up with and that defined art in her home. They offered a unique visual language because of their stunning textural qualities and their cultural significance in Uganda.
During her residency with 32° East, Kawooya has relied on these materials to process, visualize, and release past trauma. To do this, she made a triptych of self-portraits on lubogo of various colors. One recreates a familial trauma that left her feeling invalidated and uses lubogo as a metaphorical shroud to lay the past down with care. In this piece she is able to portray hurt and anger where before she would have framed it in positivity, something she refers to as a one-sided experiment as each side of the emotional spectrum is part of black womxnhood. In the second piece, she showcases herself in the present, supported by her resting self. Rest becomes essential to wellness in the present and moving on from the past. In the third piece, in the future, she imagines herself as strong, agile, and elevated. in this portrait she is in movement and moved on from the cocoon that encompassed a depressive era. This triptych was showcased at the Njabala Annual Exhibition at Makerere Art Gallery, along with an installment of a space where people were encouraged to rest on the day of exhibition. Following this collection, her final installation is a pyramid made from lubogo with equilateral sides for structural integrity. The pyramid houses a space that invites the audience to enter and rest.
Rest, well-being and mental health are core themes in Kawooya’s work. She began practicing self-portraiture as way to hold conversation with herself. This equipped her to better engage in dialogue about mental health and black womxnhood. Digging into mental health, well-being, and the diasporic experience has required vulnerability around vital questions of identity. Feeling safe, welcome, and appreciated by the artist community at 32° East and around the Njabala Foundation has made for a meaningful experience. “I feel like I’m being seen for who I am in my entirety. As I truly am,” she says. Feeling accepted reaffirms her as an artist and reaffirms that there is more than one way of being Ugandan. That barriers of distance and language don’t have to diminish her identity. She plans to carry her residency experience back into the spaces where she tutors art in the UK to help others through similar self-reflection as part of the artistic process.
Written by Gloria Kincoco.
Future Self Portrait – Fly Birungi, fly! (2023)
FUTURE – Fly Birungi, fly!
Medium: Bark cloth, banana fibres, wax pastel and raffia
Size: 2.5 x 1.3 m
Year: 2023
On a black lubugo canvas, my future self is upright and strong. The multiplicity shown in her stance; she is dancing, holding a spear, a shield and possibly levitating as the expanse of black lubugo reflects the myriad of choices and modes of being open to her. The spear reads “RESISTANCE”. I hold a shield, it no longer covers me. I have my back to the viewer as I move towards a fully grown banana tree whose three leaves are full and torn. The banana tree is fruiting.
@thenapministry tells us that rest is resistance. I choose to acknowledge and divest from the fear ingrained in me as a human being socialised as disabled working class African woman from South London. These classifications are used to terrorise me and to suppress what my body and spirit knows to be true. That I am divine. I am enough. We all are. When I'm well rested, I'm imaginative and I love to help others dream outloud. It's really special. And when we're together, living out our dreams, we free ourselves.
How are you freeing yourself today?
You can view my past, present and future self portraits at Makerere University Gallery, thanks to the Njabala Foundation @sights_of_resistance exhibition “Holding Space”
Monday to Friday 10am – 5pm and Saturday 10am – 4pm until Saturday 8 April
Thank you to 32° East Ugandan Arts Trust, Arts Council England, Moleskine Foundation, Akka Project, Linda Umutesi and FG Foundation.
Present Self Portrait: You have to work twice as hard to recover from…(2023)
In this scene, my past self lays healing from the attacks sustained in the past underneath the shield. A representation of my present day self watches and protects, eyes closed, holding a spear bearing the words “REST IS” . A banana tree is sprouting and the cut banana tree from the past scene is growing a new leaf.
Read MoreLessons
Parents aside, taking accountability for how I have internalised these systemic practices and coped (or not) with trauma has encouraged me to start making choices as the 39 year old I am today, as opposed to the hurt and angry 13 year old I can still feel.
Read MorePast Self Portrait: Birungi, you are (not) hysterical (2023)
In the past, I am depicted enraged and cowering behind a shield. A machete has cut through the bark cloth canvas, a banana tree and is heading for me. It reads: patriarchy white supremacy imperialism ableism classism.
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Banana fibre and bark cloth collage with wax pastel and raffia
Past, Present and Future Self portraits (2023)
Stemming from a daily journaling practice where I write about my ideal future and present, so I can attempt to stop reenacting past trauma, I have created a Past, Present and Future self portrait triptych. By creating a visual representation of my writing practice, I hope to confront the initial source of trauma and depict my present and future selves healing and restoring my humanity.
Read MorePatterns
When you've been made to feel less than a human being worthy of care, through systematic discrimination because your race, gender, disability and class differ to the powers that be, over and over again, you begin to spot to patterns. I needed to rest, regulate my nervous system and rebuild my sense of self and an expression of that is with my first self portraiture series.
Read MoreTension
I am enjoying creating a space for rest that inherently shocks Ugandans. I didn’t grow up knowing the #matuba bark cloth is used to shroud the dead, care and protect them on their journey back into the earth by the Ganda tribe. In making this site of rest with these inherent tensions, I want to discuss how we also struggle with accepting care and support.
Read MoreCan you rest?
Can you rest? is part of the Annual Njabala Foundation Exhibition "Holding Space" at Makerere Art Gallery until 8 April.
The installation of a banana and palm woven mat, bark cloth sheet, banana fibre headrest and citronella for sensory pleasure and protection is an invitation to all who have ever identified as a woman to rest.