Agaba Joel Gabriel is a photographer from Kampala, Uganda. Agaba’s photography captures memories and reflections, people, places and space, from the pretty to the mundane. They imagine someone might have missed these everyday details – or that aliens might find them useful someday. Unbound by medium, Agaba’s creative process is fluid and open. And, they love tea!
FROM MEMORY TO MEDIUM: THE EMOTIONAL ARCHITECTURES OF AGABA’S WORK
Essay on Agaba Joel Gabriel’s 32° East Residency
by Pamela Enyonu
What struck me most about Agaba’s time at 32° East was not just what they created, but how they moved through the making.
There’s something emotionally precise about their approach—quiet but never passive. From the beginning, it was clear that Agaba wasn’t interested in performative productivity. They were building something much slower, much more textured.
Agaba works from the inside out. Their process begins in memory, but not in the nostalgic sense. Instead, it’s about listening deeply—to themselves, to the space, to the silences in between. Holding tenderness and rigour at the same time. This residency gave them space to be expansive, to experiment with form without abandoning feeling. It was a way of holding conversation—with the camera, yes, but also with their younger self, their family, their body, and the world around them.
“The photographer is not simply the person who records the past but the one who invents it.” Sontag, Susan. On Photography. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1977.
That quote—written on a Post-it in their studio—summarises much of Agaba’s intent. The desire to blur mediums—text, video, sound, performance—feels less like a stylistic choice and more like a natural extension of their thinking. Who they are: A multi-skilled artist with an intuitive feel for the vibes present.
In their work, the chaos of memory becomes material—the weight of lineage, the ache of becoming— parsed, pared down, and rendered …frames…rumble…scribbles or…a rusted grave marker.
Witness to lives lived, now [re]imagined, re[told], re[framed], re[presented].
Agaba is in the Room.
Carry yourself with a gentle alertness.
Pamela Enyonu (1985) is a multimedia artist based in Kampala, Uganda.
