Pamela Enyonu

In October 2023 we hosted Pamela Enyonu at the University of York, on our first artist residency as part of the project. Enyonu is a Ugandan artist interested in the politics of identity, trauma, healing, and empowerment. She is a mixed-media and multidisciplinary artist who has exhibited in various group and solo exhibitions in Uganda, Congo, Israel, Mali, Tanzania, the United States, the United Arab Emirates, and Italy. 

Enyonu’s working title for the research she undertook and artwork she produced during her stay was “Thoughts on paper: the economies of being an African artist in a global world.” Paper is one of the main materials that Enyonu uses in her work. As she explains, paper is versatile - it allows for freedom, and can represent complexity and beauty at the same time, helping to express difficult issues within human rights: 

“I like to create really complex layered backgrounds; it mimics a texture, in the process of creating those different layers of depth…I try to be as loose as possible with this so that you have a balance of accidents and intentions. This is how I tickle that itch that simply wants to make a beautiful thing, this is how I scratch it… I want to talk about things that are heavy and complicated and painful. I need beauty to balance it all out. I guess that’s the language that I’m trying to create.”

Enyonu contrasts this use of paper with the role of paper in an imperial and colonial world. “Paper is the material of capitalism [laughs].  It just keeps changing. First, it was treaties, then deeds, then certificates, you know. Each time they're like, ‘show me your papers’; documents. Paper is a weighted, loaded, material. I’m enjoying that challenge of showing people what paper can do amongst all the other things it has done.”

During her stay, Enyonu meditated on the building blocks of home and colonial legacies through the lens of applied human rights. She carried out archival research on her father's time at the University of York. He studied at the institution before taking up a key position in Uganda’s post-colonial government. Pamela also attended a human rights workshop and a lecture delivered by Dr Ioana Cismas, and interacted with the local academic and arts community in York. Pamela also completed a series of paper-based works, including a portrait of Ugandan human rights defender David Kato, and her Letters project, a poem spread across letters to read, share or open. 

In terms of how the residency helped her develop her practice, Pamela explained:

“What I'm doing here, the most honest answer would be I’m thinking, I’m thinking. I’m writing. I’m designing questions in preparation for a conversation I'm about to have. A conversation we are about to have…about the intentionality of how we build our homes both in the personal and on the border. What are the aspirations we have for ourselves and our countries, and how do those aspirations harm the person next to us?  And even the last three weeks of just seeing what intention looks like …to be able to think about what I want to do with intention and to be surrounded by other people who are doing what they are doing with intention – that for me is a gift because then I get to learn their processes and their disciplines. Because there is no school that can teach you to be a better version of yourself you just have to be surrounded by people who are interested in being a better version of themselves.”

In particular, Enyonu is developing her artistic interest in abundance, positioning it as a concept worth striving for, but rethinking it in relation to capitalism. 

“I ask myself, what is abundance? I’m trying to decode the language of capital and I ask myself what is abundance, how has abundance been imaged over time and for the last maybe 50 or so years abundance has always had a specific type of image. Your nuclear family, 2.5 kids, going to good schools, you are enjoying life; you have a car or two, you can afford a holiday. So it’s been presented as that, and every image we see sort of reinforces that. If you do right you get to enjoy this and I feel like its up for a rebrand – the image of what abundance is.”

Pamela’s residency was documented by ART Co-Investigator and filmmaker Emilie Flower. Following the residency, Pamela hopes to mount an exhibition in her home town in Uganda to share her work with her local audience.

The photos below were taken by and reproduced with permission from Emilie Flower.