They too Are the Earth: Sanaa Gateja

They Too Are the Earth brings Sanaa Gateja's practice into renewed focus through an exploration of material, memory, and transformation. Across his renowned paper-bead tapestries on bark cloth, new works on banana fibre, and found root sculptures shaped by time and nature, Gateja returns to the materials and processes that have long defined his artistic language while opening them to new sculptural and spatial possibilities.

Borrowing its title from Niyi Osundare's poem "They Too Are the Earth," the exhibition asks what becomes possible when we look again at the things we have been taught to overlook. In Gateja's hands, discarded paper, banana fibre, bark cloth, raffia, roots, and weathered wood become carriers of memory, history, beauty, and renewed value.

Built through acts of stitching, threading, joining, binding, cutting, rolling, and assembling, the exhibition invites viewers to encounter Gateja's practice as a broad field of material thought: one rooted in Uganda, shaped by experimentation, and grounded in the belief that value already exists in the things around us.

Curated by Daudi Karungi.