About
Sam Mukumba is a Ugandan artist and teacher living in the United Kingdom. He is a trained educator specializing in Art and Design/Craft, and he taught at St. Charles Lwanga Kasasa Secondary school before moving to England. He trained as a secondary school Art and Design/Craft teacher at Kyambogo University in Uganda. He graduated from Bradford University with a National Diploma and BA degree in Art and Design/Craft. He has worked directly with young people with additional needs at Ruskin Mill College, where he specializes in ceramics. Additionally, he paints, sculpts, and runs workshops at schools and community projects. Sam has an MA in Social Sculpture from Oxford Brookes, and he set up the Dewe project Uganda, which works with those who are not able to access this kind of education in Uganda. He is a prolific builder, innovative mobilizer, and teacher with a pedagogy specializing in Earth oven making and Creative Community Projects.
The Greatest Sculptor Of All
As Sam wanders in the desert of Sinai, the Mother of all rocks, appearing empty yet full, he finds his true Goddess. The land of vastness, full of intriguing variations of natural forms, sculpted and organised by nature. A place where his imagination grew wild. In this place, he started to admire and become more inspired by the power of natural forces – the greatest sculptor of all.
He vividly experienced the fascinating, whispering, resonating, melodious sounds of nature at work. He found himself in this sound bath, being transported beyond life. It is no surprise that the three old religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam were all born from these vicinities.
From this journey, full of provocative artistic images, arose for him questions about the formation of this beautiful and harsh landscape. How much of this is due to natural phenomena and how much of this is due to human negligence e.g. cutting down the rainforests? The experience left him with a bounty of knowledge, a great desire to investigate and explore the advantages and destructive nature of the four elements and how, as humans, we can be part of the landscape and limit our contribution to the destruction of Mother Nature.
Since this time, some of Sam’s artwork has been inspired by the natural world, and he puts strong emphasis on raising awareness of the world’s desertification and how it contributes to global warming. This journey is always continuously influencing the development of www.thedeweprojectuganda.
Our Fragile Lives
Fragile Lives is Sam Mukumba’s new artwork which he has been developing for almost the last ten years. After exploring and experimenting with different materials on how to communicate atrocity, he decided to concentrate on ceramic sculpting which has given him the opportunity to convey the depth of the matter. The intention of this work is to raise awareness of human suffering and the devastating times the world is facing and going through today. This work expresses and is a record of these historical and challenging catastrophes that are causing exodus in many parts of the world.
