Achola Rosario (History in Progress)

Achola Rosario was a self-taught painter who won the Artist of the Year prize at her high school graduation in England in 1996. She staged a solo exhibition in Uganda called “Are you Experienced” in 2000. She also exhibited in The Netherlands and participated in the 32 Degrees East project: History in Progress- Sidamu Nyuma, curated by Andrea Stultients. She was interested in the psychology of her subjects and the duality of personality. She painted surrealist portraits with oils, pastels, and acrylics and would attach found objects to her paintings for a third-dimension conceptuality. She signed with the crown of The Trinity because she felt she was not the actual painter- just a channeller. 

Achola Rosario was one of three artists who worked on Simuda Nyuma during her 2014 residency at 32° East. Simuda Nyuma is the title of a trilogy written during the 1930s by Ham Mukasa (1870-1956), who was an important chief of Baganda – a kingdom in south-central Uganda. Being highly educated and one of the first literate in the region, Mukasa wrote about the lives of three kings who ruled Buganda from ca. 1850 until the 1930s.Inside Mukasa’s family collection, which includes photographs, books, manuscripts and documents, curator Andrea Stultiens found a list with descriptions for illustrations. These illustrations were meant to be shown in the trilogy on the life of the three kings, but were never created. Intrigued by this document, Stultiens assigned Ugandan and Dutch artists to interpret and create the illustrations.