Kanyo, Love

2019. Photography, Text


Kanyo is an Acholi word that means to endure, to be resilient.


Context: As a weapon of this particular war the LRA abducted women and young girls from their families and homes and forced them into marriage with LRA combatants. When the war ended the former forced wives of the LRA fighters, and the children they bore during their forced marriages, (re)joined civilian life and traditional courtships, relationships and family life were expected to resume. The women were also expected to remain silent about their experiences.


Kanyo, Love, is an intimate work about the interior experience of post-war social integration examined through the post-war, romantic love relationships of 36 former forced wives of LRA combatants (The Women). The project uses individual portraits, an archive of courtship gifts, testimonies of the post-war love relationships of The Women and media clippings about the war. It creates a visual shift away from misrepresentation and provides archival layers for The Women to express themselves with a past, a present and future, thus offering a counternarrative to the single, frozen-in-time chronicle of abduction and forced marriage that has been superimposed on them.


Published paper: Repairing Representational Wounds: Artistic and Curatorial Approaches to Transition After War. I Co-Authored the paper with Kara Blackmore. Critical Arts Journal. UNISA Press. 2021.


Exhibitions: Makerere Art Gallery, Kampala, Uganda (2022), TAKS Center, Gulu, Uganda (2019); Alliance Francaise, Kampala, Uganda (2019)


Installation view: TAKS Center, Gulu 2019


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Installation view. 2022.

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Installation view. 2022.

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Installation View. 2019.

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Installation View. 2019.

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