November 06, 2025 - November 09, 2025
Exhibiting Artists: Charlene Komuntale and Richard Atugonza
At the 2025 edition of Art X Lagos, Afriart Gallery proudly presents the work of Richard Atugonza and Charlene Komuntale, two Ugandan artists whose practices converge in their soulful explorations of resilience, transformation, and the quiet negotiations between inner and outer worlds.
Together, Atugonza and Komuntale reflect on the ways physical, emotional, and social bodies persist and find meaning within structures of labor, beauty, and identity.
Richard Atugonza’s recent body of work is inspired by a personal reflection on physical labor and exercise, Atugonza reimagines the concept of “working out” as a universal human condition, one that transcends the gym or other dedicated spaces to encompass the endurance, commitment, and perseverance required in everyday life.
Atugonza uses the metaphor of dumbbells to symbolize the personal and emotional weights individuals carry as they navigate life’s challenges. Each piece portrays the tension between fragility and endurance, reflecting the human capacity to withstand, adapt, and evolve. The seated figurative forms often appear in moments of pause: absorbing, reflecting, or recuperating, capturing the quiet strength that arises from self-awareness and acceptance.
Rooted in his material practice, Atugonza continues to repurpose organic and discarded elements such as sawdust and charcoal, transforming them into sculptures that embody both vulnerability and resilience. Through this transformation, the materials gain strength, echoing his central theme of finding balance amid life’s pressures.
Charlene Komuntale’s ongoing body of work ‘Threads’ explores how beauty is framed, inherited, and internalized. Using corsets, beads, thread, and autumn leaves, the artist investigates the tensions between freedom and control, adornment and labor, exposure and restraint.
At the center of the work is the corset, a garment that embodies dual meanings. Historically seen both as a tool of restriction and as a means for women to claim visual presence through sculpted silhouettes, the corset becomes a metaphor for the complexity of autonomy and conformity. For Komuntale, beauty exists within this tension: it is both self-expression and a construct shaped by larger systems.
In ‘Threads’, the corset is neither villain nor hero but a platform for conversation. As figures pull at their corsets and beads surface, the act of unraveling transforms into a gesture of questioning, of history, memory, and inherited ideals. Beads symbolize care, time, and the hidden labor.
The systems that define beauty shape how we see ourselves and each other. Threads does not provide answers. It sits in the tension and asks: What have we learned about beauty? Whose beauty? Who defines it? Who taught us? At what cost? And what does it cost to unlace it? And, ultimately, what new forms of beauty can we imagine—ones rooted in memory, care, and freedom?
