Papa Shabani (History in Progress)

Papa Shabani is an award-winning Ugandan photographer. His contemporary art practice involves research, intimacy, expression, and communication as a process of documenting life. He works to capture his subjects in their rawest, truest form. Shabani was a recipient of Uganda Press Photo Award 2013 and 2014, and was the Kampala Art Festival 2014 New Talent Award Winner for his project, “Le Studio Boda Boda.” Shabani’s work has been shown in Uganda, Kenya, India (Just Another Photo Festival), Netherlands (Noorderlicht Photo Festival), Amsterdam (Framer Framed), Switzerland (Neusicht Art Festival) and Germany (Millerntor Gallery). 

Papa Shabani was one of three artists who worked on Simuda Nyuma during his 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.