Nommo Gallery Presents ‘Where Memory Lives’, A Profound Group Exhibition Exploring Identity, Place, and the Passage of Time

Nommo Gallery, Uganda’s National Art Gallery, is proud to announce Where Memory Lives, an expansive and deeply reflective group exhibition running from July 1 to July 27, 2024. This highly anticipated showcase brings together a stellar lineup of contemporary visual artists who interrogate the delicate, overlapping relationships between personal memory, cultural identity, geography, and the relentless passage of time.

Where Memory Lives functions as an artistic excavation. Moving beyond purely aesthetic representations of landscape and portraiture, the exhibition positions the human body and the physical environment as living archives. Through an evocative mix of painting, photography, sculpture, and mixed-media installations, the participating artists explore how ordinary spaces absorb human experiences over generations, holding onto the silent traces of movement, love, hardship, and belief.

The exhibition tackles a poignant, universal question: how do we anchor our sense of self when the physical markers of our past, our childhood neighborhoods, ancestral landscapes, and shared traditions; are constantly shifting under the weight of modernization and time? The artworks on display offer formally intelligent, nuanced answers. Some artists turn their focus inward, capturing the fragile, fragmented nature of nostalgia through soft textures and fading light, while others document the stark architectural changes in our urban spaces, revealing how communities adapt, survive, and remember.

The spatial layout within the historic halls of Nommo Gallery has been meticulously designed to heighten this psychological journey. Visitors are guided through a carefully sequenced narrative that moves from open, contemplative compositions to dense, materially rich visual fields. This deliberate curation creates a powerful dialogue between the pieces, allowing the audience to feel the emotional shift from the expansiveness of open memory to the compression of vanishing histories.

“We often treat the past as something left behind, but this exhibition proves that memory is an active, living presence,” says the curatorial team at Nommo Gallery. “Where Memory Lives is a stunning masterclass in visual storytelling. The artists do not rely on loud, manufactured spectacles; instead, they invite the viewer into a quieter, deeper looking. It is a timely and incredibly resonant commentary on how we carry our culture and inheritance through changing times.”

Bringing together some of the region’s most attentive and poetic creative voices, the exhibition promises an unforgettable experience for art collectors, cultural critics, and the general public, reaffirming Nommo Gallery’s historic mission to foster critical cultural dialogue in Uganda.