On 19th July 2022 we hosted a pop-up exhibition of Jim Joel Nyakaana’s ‘Akalimu’ project in Nakasero Market, Uganda’s oldest public market, in downtown Kampala.
The exhibition featured commissioned photographs taken by Jim Joel that detail the challenges faced by young men working outdoors in a changing climate in urban Uganda.
The photographs were taken in 5 cities: Kampala, Fort Portal, Masaka, Gulu and Jinja across Uganda’s four regions. The photographs and their display in and among the stalls of a busy market provided an opportunity to engage the general public in discussions around the everyday impacts of climate change, and spotlight the lived experiences of informal city workers. This included the way in which issues including gender, labour, class, age, informality and urbanism intersect, which was directly relevant to many of the passers-by who viewed the work – mostly market vendors and market users.
Jim Joel and an associate used the pop-up exhibition to speak directly with passers-by, discuss environmental issues with them, and gain their insights and feedback on the work. The exhibition not only provided an opportunity for learning for the community on climate change, but a chance to tell their own stories about how environmental challenges have impacted them and how they are coping with these challenges. We captured many of these responses and stories from passerby.
The pop-up exhibition aimed to provide an opportunity to engage parts of the population who would be unlikely to attend an exhibition in a more traditional space such as a gallery or museum. We sought to take the work directly to them in a space where the impacts of changes in the environmental including increased temperatures and erratic rainfall can be clearly seen, felt and experienced.
