Emma Wolukau-Wanambwa
Margaret Trowell School of Art [Escuela de arte Margaret Trowell], 2013
Margaret Trowell School of Art pertenece a un corpus de trabajo mayor, denominado Uganda in Black and White, que Emma Wolukau-Wanambwa ha desarrollado desde 2010 en torno a las relaciones entre el colonialismo, la memoria y la representación en los últimos años del Protectorado de Uganda. Esta obra forma parte de un conjunto de piezas donde WolukauWanambwa investiga sobre los orígenes y efectos de la primera escuela profesional de arte del África anglófona. La escuela de Margaret Trowell comenzó en 1937 como una serie de clases ofrecidas para voluntarios del Makerere College School for Boys y el Mulago Hospital por parte de esta pintora educada en la Slade School of Art y el Institute of Education (University of London) en la década de los 20. Tras una etapa de progresivo reconocimiento de su trabajo educativo, las clases fueron incorporadas al curriculum del Makerere College y finalmente se constituyó como departamento universitario de bellas artes en 1949. Además de esta labor, Trowell fue la primera conservadora del Museo de Uganda y escribió libros sobre educación artística y sobre las artes tradicionales del África del Este. A través de la serie Margaret Trowell School of Art Wolukau-Wanambwa invita a una reflexión sobre el modo en el que la educación artística se convirtió en un 38
Margaret Trowell School of Art is part of a larger body of work called Uganda in Black and White that Emma Wolukau-Wanambwa has been developing since 2010, exploring the links between colonialism, memory and representation in the final years of the Uganda Protectorate. This work belongs to a series of pieces in which WolukauWanambwa investigates the origins and repercussions of the first professional art school in English-speaking Africa. Margaret Trowell’s school began in 1937 as a series of classes offers to volunteers from the Makerere College School for Boys and Mulago Hospital by this British painter, who studied at the Slade School of Art and the Institute of Education (University of London) in the 1920s. She soon gained recognition for her educational work, and her classes were added to the curriculum at Makerere College and eventually led to the creation of a university-level fine arts department in 1949. Trowell was also the first curator of the Uganda Museum and authored books on art education and the traditional arts of East Africa. In Margaret Trowell School of Art, Wolukau-Wanambwa invites us to reflect on how art education became an agent of subjectivity for the colonized, riddled with complex forms of identification and disidentification with European culture.
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