Martha Kazungu

I am a Ugandan Curator with several years of professional experience in curating, project planning and execution, cultural coordination, management and stakeholder engagement in Africa and Europe. I hold a Master of Arts degree in African Visual and Verbal Art with a focus on curating and media in Africa from the University of Bayreuth in Germany. My master's thesis explored the question of style in graphic art from Makerere University, specifically that which is housed within the collections of Makerere Art Gallery, the World Culture Museum in Frankfurt, and Klaus Betz. I am also an alumnus of the Makerere University, The MuseumsLab, Independent Curators International (ICI), Àsìkò School, C& and AtWork.Throughout my career, I have amassed knowledge surrounding curatorial practice and art collections. At the Makerere Art Gallery, I was exposed to a collection consisting of modern African art majorly from East African artists and alumni of the Makerere Art School. I was later privileged to be a researcher on a multi- year research project titled African Art History and the Formation of a Modern Aesthetic where I engaged with and researched on the African art collections in the World Culture Museum in Frankfurt and the Iwalewahaus in Bayreuth, Germany. This engagement culminated into the exhibition Feedback Art Africa and the 1980s in which I served as Curatorial Assistant under smooth Ugochukwu. In addition, I coordinated Art History Re-written: Contributing to the History of Post-colonial Modernism symposium at the Uganda national museum consisting of renowned scholars of African art such as Sydney Littlefield Kasfir.

As an Assistant Curator at the MARKK Museum in Hamburg, I engaged the institution’s African collection in various ways – research, handling, inventory and accession, loaning, writing condition reports, transporting objects, attending to public inquiries about the collection, organising interventions with the collection among others. While at the MARKK, I co-curated the Archive of Experiences exhibition, one of the exhibitions in the 8th Triennial of photography in Hamburg, Germany, featuring works from the institution's photographic collection as well as the work of Ghanaian artist Kelvin Haizel. The exhibition was accompanied by a catalog that I co-edited.Through my involvement in conceptualization, development and coordination of international projects, exhibitions, gatherings, virtual and in-person residencies, workshops, webinars, and conferences, I have met a wide range of creatives, artists, curators, and dealers with keen interest in the continent. For instance, until June 2023, I supported the Kulturstiftung des Bundes (Federal German Cultural Foundation) as a consultant towards the co-curation of TURN2 Labs. In my role as a co-curator of the TURN2 Labs, I supported development and execution of three thematic convenings (Labs) in Nairobi (archives), Dakar (relationality) and Tunis (climate justice), each consisting of 30 experts from the cultural scenes in Africa and Europe. I also co edited the publication on the Labs which was published in 2024.

Other roles I have accomplished include serving on the scholarly advisory committee for the Empowerment exhibition at the KunstMuseum Wolfsburg. I was on the selection committee for the Henrike Grohs Art Award, one of the most popular awards aimed at supporting African artists. I have also reviewed applications for various cultural institutions in Africa and Europe. Furthermore, I have contributed to several publications including Phaidon’s publication titled Great Women Painters and African Artists: From 1882 to Now, Empowerment exhibition catalog, Memoria exhibition catalog, Embodying Social Being, Obsidian Journal among others. I have curated exhibitions in Africa and Europe.