ART: Old is gold

Art inspired by a humble life and a grandfather’s idioms

| DOMINIC MUWANGUZI | Early exposure to life’s trials; with a single mother and constant scarce resources, ensured that Adrian Migadde looks to art as a way out. In school, his drawings made him friends and paid his school fees. Later on, when he was re-united with his retired civil servant grandfather, he exposed him to immense knowledge of the Buganda traditional customs, proverbs and idioms alongside the colonial mannerisms. The old man also loved the rich life. Today, Migaddes’s art mirrors the different influence in rather paradoxical ways.

His art is a delicate figurative mirror of his life. But he works on large extravagant canvases as if to mock his frugal past. He grew up in a single small room, with everything crammed into it. But his paintings are dominated by old is gold concepts. His palette has rich golden as the background, with vintage cars, classy Afro-haired women clad in dapper colonial dress-codes to the fore. It all appears to be a tribute the grandfather who loved the rich life. The artist talks about him fondly. He paid his school fees and supported him in many ways; even paving way for his future success as an artist.

His palette is also luminous bright, suggesting his love for light. He says his love for television inspired his love for light. The telly is a constant backdrop in his studio.

“I loved T.V and I still do,” he enthuses shyly as he peers at the large screen in his small studio. And it influences his art. For example, he paints white people a lot – because they dominate the TV world. He is also fascinated by the contrast between the mobile forms and characters on TV and the still images on canvas.

When he does paper collages, he likes to layer his paintings with mostly of old international fashion-magazine cut-outs and the prized certificates of his sage grandfather. He scanned them and glues them together to create monochrome background colours. That the technique and its intricate application validate non-traditional media in art appears secondary. Instead, it shows that while recycling in art is considered a novelty today; in Migadde’s childhood, everything was put into reuse endless times.

He interrogates the notion of cultural preservation that is seemingly neglected by contemporary society. His art seems to imply that in order to move forward as a community, we must embrace old gold alongside the modern muse.

****

Adrian Miggade participated in the Afriart Surfaces Conceptual workshop and exhibition in 2017. He now runs a studio MAG Arts at Makerere Kavule along the Bwaise- Kawempe Highway. Images, courtesy of the Artist FB page