Margaux Schwab (foodculture days): Precisely three years ago, foodculture days embarked on a new online editorial chapter by launching Boca A Boca. The intention was to deepen our understanding around certain themes that we question and that question us in return. Each invited guest editor brings their situated perspective, network and sensibilities, allowing the transdisciplinary perspective so dear to us to emerge organically. The intention is to question the role of art and artists in supporting social and political movements of change on multiple scales and, simultaneously, providing them with a platform to expose our western gaze and its implications.

For this new editorial season, beyond enriching the public’s perspective on what African art is, what is primarily at stake is the meaning of its values and the potential of their expression in everyday life.

KLA ART festival (by 32° East, an art and residency center founded in 2011 in Kampala) and foodculture days Biennale share many approaches to field-research, slower cultural work and festival-making, as well as audience/community reach. Together with its director, Teesa Bahana, we realized that we shared a common aspiration: to better understand the most important conditions for enabling sustainable artistic processes rooted in the territory as well as a common longing for growing otherwise.

For its 5th edition, KLA ART festival focused on cultural heritage through the lens of care instructions for the living world. A reflection echoing with foodculture days’ vision on the multiple ways a festival can be(come) a platform to encourage different communities to explore multiple relationships with its surroundings. Together, we celebrate cooking and food as one of the few media that express complex ecologies and territories so well. By letting what is outside enter your body, each bite becomes a manifestation of the interdependence of matter and affects. Eating makes us vulnerable.

By envisioning a nonlocal approach, this cycle inquires how we might try to mitigate the colonial violence inherent in fixed identities and so called cultural differences by letting the mouth be “a portal, an entrance, a door”, as Lucy Cordes Engelman wrote it already in her contribution to an early cycle of Boca A Boca back in 2023. Once again, I am delighted to see how Boca A Boca has turned into a potent tool to get to know new people, e.g., 32° EAST and KLA ART festival teams, or deepen existing relations, like with Mateo Chacón Pino, and connect with our publics through an infinite composition of contributions where every entity is an expression of all others.

32° East/KLA ART: Taking inspiration from the traditional ritual of inter-generational fireside conversations present in many Ugandan cultures, 32° East’s Ekyooto sessions are aimed at facilitating open and non-hierarchical discussions that bring diverse generations together to participate in this longheld alternative knowledge system.

Our inaugural Ekyooto took place during KLA ART ‘24, led by Kassel-based art historian and curator Mateo Chacón Pino. These conversations explored the intersection of art, ecology, care, and curatorship within both local and global contexts. The sessions which highlighted the need for alternative knowledge-sharing platforms attracted large audiences, and overwhelmingly positive feedback from attendees and 32° East members. Responding to this need, we made Ekyooto a regular part of our 2025 programming, hosting four sessions featuring diverse themes aimed at fostering knowledge exchange, skill sharing, and open discussions on contemporary art and its role in society.

Mateo Chacón Pino: When preparing for my research trip to Kampala, Uganda, I intended to look for similarities between the artists at KLA ART Festival and the contributors at foodculture days’ Biennale. I was playing the old European train of thought of placing similar things or thoughts together, separating what is different–a base for Linnean thought on species or Cartesian space. Little did I expect to encounter a reality that did not meet my imagination; an embodiment of difference without separability, a thought developed by Brazilian thinker Denise Ferreira da Silva, through food. Personally, I am used to visiting German and Swiss markets and seeing a large variety of apples, each with their distinct taste, e.g., sweet, aromatic, fresh, sour, size or color. Some apples offer themselves for distinct uses depending on their qualities; baking, juice, as snacks, or even as jams. We know the seasons and the regions–variety and diversity are not an expression of politics but rather of culture/agriculture. Yet its kitchentable cousin, the banana, experiences barely a fragment of the same recognition: the European palate only ever tastes the humble Cavendish banana, the dominant global variety as an outcome between ecological resistance through infections and capital-driven monoculture. Whereas East African culture is intimately familiar with a large variety of bananas. As Rebecca Khamala writes you might not find a banana in Uganda, but matooke, embidde, bogoya, and more, all with their own qualities and uses. And often I would hear from those I met which variety they prefer, with little difference to a conversation with Swiss friends about which apple variety they enjoy the most. Rather, the differences highlight the human inability to escape ecological dependencies, despite modernity, capitalism and, most importantly, the attempt to replace ecology through technological means.

What these attempts do, in erasing differences that make us human and alienating us from each others humanity, is discussed through Jim Chuchu’s film contribution; an essay in giving an appropriate image to the human-made famine in Eastern Africa without falling into the pitfalls of reproducing poverty porn and exoticism. Similarly, Cassiane Pfund opens a poetic debate whether it is new images, new words that are needed or, in my reading, whether we should rather organize quickly. The conversation between Brogan Mwesigwa and Sandra Knecht bridges across multiple differences simultaneously: between Switzerland and Uganda–the Global North and the Global South–, between different generations of artists, and between gendered experiences of living and working within an ecology.

As much as we may share the fact that our lives are being shaped by climate catastrophe, the differences between us and others really only reflect on our own social, economic, political and ecological position. Whether someone suffers more or less does not change our own experience, yet it may help teach us which strategies may or may not be suitable for our individual situation.

This cycle’s title is a reference to Marxian metabolic rift, the disconnect between capitalist logic and natural resources which leads to ecological crises, as is the current climate catastrophe. No matter where we live and under which circumstances; no one will evade the consequences of extractive and monocultural agroeconomy, with the implication that human survival hinges on collaboration and action rather than on techno-solutions or human-centric politics. And this is perhaps what the arts of living on the rift may be: an attempt to acknowledge the distinct experience of being a political agent and subject to ecology, no matter where we live, and attempt to thrive in solidarity. These arts are realist in the sense that it deals with material reality instead of articulating speculation. It is not an exercise in awareness, after all, the torturer is most aware of the victim’s pain. Instead, it is a moral stance for the ecological dimension of any cultural practice, a learning through horizontal difference.

to begin with
i wished to imagine rituals for the future
to fill a blank
to defy despair
to make celebrations and find communities
to embrace trust and name hope
an unpleasant truth is that i don’t know anymore
i don’t know where to start
nor how to (dis)continue
I don’t know
and not knowing now feels harder than ever...

but have i ever known anyway?
and you, have you ever known anyway?

what i observe from here, in switzerland, is that a certain
amount of recent art works and exhibitions, texts, research
programs and open calls is directed towards detangling,
unfolding, expanding, hacking, recreating, building, undoing,
reshaping, reinventing and designing future(s)...

but what would be
what would it sound or taste like
a future to yearn for?

00. what tongue(s)?

storytelling and underground stories have probably been an act
of resisting oppressions and uncertainties, an act of imagining
alternative solutions and gathering since human beings can
speak.

when mateo chacón pino contacted me to write a text, my
mouth felt dry as if my tongue was gone, and words were barely
present. i asked myself:

do we need more and more and more and more words?

in an attempt to grasp something from a landscape my fingers
don’t recognize most textures of
from futures that feel blurry
–unimaginable and distant, yet so close–
i sit by the river
searching sediments and pebbles for another tongue
a sensory one for
what is
what resists
what evolves
what survives
a tongue that dances
a tongue that doubts and trusts
a tongue that listens
a tongue for now

pause

gravity is what has the capacity to make bodies sink, just as
much as it allows them to be held, for as long as a ground
remains.

who is we?
who is they?

pause

for now
close your eyes
your own flesh
merged with water
feels like the translucent one of a jellyfish
marine mammals¹
appear

marine heatwaves the moment after
and the same melody
again and again
reminding you of a sacred foundation
creatures that came before
all those who will hopefully come after

01. future(s)

if tomorrow can be understood as much as
the day after today
a period of time close to now
a few decades centuries ahead
or even when the sun explodes
–and yet probably some time before–
what future(s) are we talking about?
what is meant to be understood when the word ‘future’ is used?
is it really and only a matter of time?
and what would make future(s) possible?

I read somewhere that quantum physics and ongoing
research keep showing us how little our understanding of the
future is. fascinating enough, it feels like time perceived as
linear
tends to mimic a common representation of human life; a
chronological timeline starting with birth and ending with
death.
but is it really?
in the piece niagara 3000, the artist pamina de coulon says

pause

for now
I close my eyes
the same melody unfolds
creatures who came before
those who will come after

02. where to start?

a place to start could be causality, whilst keeping in mind the
richness and uncertainty of multifactoriality, that is,
when different factors are involved and it becomes complex to
tell which causes what and how. ie, it can be very difficult to
identify what cause(s) migraines because different elements
are, most of the time, commonly identified to
be(come) potential triggers, such as food, stress, sensory
stimulation, pollution, abuse, etc., and in many cases, they tend
to be combined. this is when a holistic vision tends to
highlight the notions of system and ecosystem.

if part of what a future to yearn for may be like partially depends
on how we, as societies, decide to take action, on what we, as
societies, decide to embody and nurture,

how to prepare the bed for such futures now?

how can we find ways through by embracing the discomfort of
uncertainty?

how can we allow ourselves to grieve, not as a sign of despair,
rather as a way of integrating the fragility of life and
reactivating our love for the earth we live on?

and again, who is we?

in her last book vivre libre³, amandine gay expresses with clarity
how the desire to transform society must be thought of as a
collective effort that starts with an intimate movement. she
writes:

her vision offers the chance to both come back to one’s own
situated body through decentering oneself from normativity with
a certain lucidity regarding how falling into the trap of white
supremacy–by both internalizing and reproducing its tools–needs to be talked about, not with the intention of blaming
individuals, but as a reminder of where such transformation
starts with.

03. hierarchised knowledge⁵, and bodies

in 2016, i remember an introductory class on
epistemology⁶ and the exam i wonderfully failed at. i found
myself having difficulties at engaging with the subject as the
approach was lacking something i needed, something crucial i
struggled to identify at the time. i then started to look around to
soon realize that, at the time, the department–in which i tried
to fit in not without anxiety–had a tendency to deeming itself
as a temple of knowledge whilst actually failing at
reporting on diversity of knowledge, as well as broadening
perspectives, representations and points of view.

a year later, i meet marie lefebvre–a researcher based in
montreal who i am happy to call friend– she introduced
me to both a philosophical and social practice which aims to decenter a
commonly shared view on (brain perceived)
intelligence and knowledge. such practice underlines
the necessity of both listening to–in a broad sense–and
considering every person as a potential epistemic agent in the
sense that everyone can be learned from. this vision makes
space for both a redistribution of power, and
questioning stereotypes as well as other hindrances to
legitimacy.

here are two definitions of knowledge from the merriam
webster dictionary⁷:

i wonder how could coexist different modes of knowledge
acquisition without hierarchies, and beyond these very modes,
how to collectively aim towards what marie explained to me.

and what about access to knowledge?

could it be that the absence of situated bodies within such an
analytic field was a central factor of the
disconnection i experienced?

and if yes, how to value body intelligence and operate from a
common ground: we experience and feel–in our own sensitive
ways–, therefore we belong?

cultivating long term visions contributes to giving a more
consistent direction to actions and helps find meaning.
however, whilst imagining futures is crucial, it cannot be
sufficient as the act of imagining itself is intertwined with the
now⁸, and i will even say, with situated nows.

a future to yearn for won’t magically happen
without taking accountability
without dismantling any kind of supremacy
without feeling
and coming back to (our) bodies with radical honesty

04. epistemic injustice

the notion of epistemic injustice invented by miranda fricker⁹,
invites to address the question of knowledge as power. indeed,
who is perceived as contributing to the creation of knowledge
and who is not? which voices are heared, which are ignored
and which are silenced?

each time a voice is ignored and silenced,
what will be remembered from the past shrinks already, and
with it, an understanding of the present. to feel a sense of the
present(s) that is or are being lived, and project any type of
possible future, there is an essential urge to work towards
resisting separation.

like many authors and artists, wendy
delorme¹⁰ reaffirms in an interview with constant spina for censored magazine¹¹,
reaffirms separation:

an article on epistemic (knowledge) injustice within the field of
psychiatry research provides an understanding of the concept:

the authors of the article mention and warn against the risk of
epistemic exploitation, which appears to be another form of
extractivism when these lived experiences are absorbed within
existing dominant structures where they become tokens¹⁴. in
reality, the question of the lived experiences, when facing
extractivism mecanisms, is deeply intertwined with colonial
thinking:

05. sensitive knowledge

the centre d’archivage des savoirs sensibles, an art work by the
company création dans la chambre¹⁶ which connects popular
archives, knowledge(s) and memory, moved me deeply. here is
the description i found on their website:

"The Camera Cannot Eat" is a video essay that wrestles with the quandary of how to make images about African food culture when every visual choice (whether 'traditional' or 'contemporary') feeds extractive gazes built over centuries of colonial image-making.

The work uses the very materials it critiques (stock footage of Africans cooking and eating, AI-generated imagery of 'African food') to reveal how thoroughly the visual language of African food has already been captured, catalogued, and turned into data.

Rather than offering solutions, the essay stews in this tension, suggesting that what cannot be photographed, the senses of taste and smell, and the embodied experience of gathering around food, might be what remains safe, as yet unreachable by the circuits of extraction

There is a Luganda saying: “Oluganda kulya, olugenda enjala teluda,” which translates to “Relationship [brotherhood] is eating, the one [relationship] that goes hungry does not return.” Beyond sustenance, food is a love language. It is revered. The source of fellowship with community, with family, and with self. Food is an intimate part of our cultural heritage, often a subject in folklore, embedded in proverbs and sayings, and at the centre of our material culture.

In many of the communities in Uganda, food is a gift and baskets are the gift wrap. A basket is never merely a basket. It is a vessel: for serving millet, for sun drying mushrooms gathered in the morning dew, for yam carried home from the fields, for bride price gifted during okwanjula¹. They are instruments of everyday life. Just as art provides insight into culture, baskets offer a unique lens into food cultures in Uganda. Basket-making is a prominent and deeply rooted tradition in Uganda’s cultural heritage, part of a broader artistic heritage engrained in the material culture of Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda, and Burundi, too. As in many other African cultures, artistic expression has been an integral part of the social and cultural fabric of communities in this region. East African art prioritised utilitarian objects over figurative ones—items crafted from materials in the immediate surroundings—reflecting a harmonious blend of function and artistry, drawing inspiration from the rhythms and necessities of daily life. To appreciate this rich cultural heritage, one has to look beyond the geopolitical boundaries that are a product of colonial enterprise and instead focus on the diverse cultures and social structures that predated colonisation. Uganda alone has 56 recognised tribes, each with their own language, customs, cuisine, and material culture. And while unique to individual groups, linguistic varieties and customs reflect deep historical, geographical and cultural connections among the different communities within and across national borders.

This piece begins with the basket, not because of its rarity or ornamentation, but precisely because it is ordinary. Baskets are part of a silent choreography of life: women winnowing grain, street vendors balancing baskets of bananas on their heads, and jjajjas² sitting by the veranda coiling obukeedo into tight spirals while recounting tales of times long gone. Baskets are everyday objects, quiet archives holding stories of the land, of labour, and of life. To follow their weave is to trace the delicate, ever-shifting relationships between people, ecosystems, and food cultures in Uganda and across East Africa. Over the years I have developed a practice somewhere between art and architecture. One fueled by a deep curiosity about people, culture, and the environment. My practice is focused on performing material culture and contemporary design, where I research traditional crafts through collaborating with local artisans, and adapt them to contemporary living. In my quest to find an African, Ugandan design identity, I landed on the mundane e kibbo n'omukeekka. Items that are found in nearly every properly adorned household in Uganda. When I began investigating the materiality and form of a basket, in the hope that I could pick from what's local to inform and inspire my own design and architectural work, I found that despite the fact that I've grown up with these items, I completely had no idea about their makeshift both in material and technique. So, I started to explore. First by deconstructing. The more I put apart, the more my ignorance is made apparent to me. I didn't realise there were so many different kinds of baskets: In Buganda³ for instance, the kikapu is a palm weaved tote-bag-like shopping basket for buying goods in the market, the kisero a deep and large basket for harvesting food from the fields and sometimes used for storing food, ekiyonjo a woven cage for carrying chicken and for sheltering chicks, ekiwewa/olugali a flat tray for winnowing grain, enzibo a woven trap for catching ensonzi , and ekibbo for storing, preparing, and serving food. These baskets and more are found throughout the country, with variations in designs, and materiality that reflect local foods, food systems, and surrounding ecosystems.

The inquiry into baskets has also meant encountering the people that make them and interacting with the ecosystems from which their materials are acquired. Most of the baskets are traditionally woven by women: in their free time, in-between chores, alongside cultivation, and during food preparation. Traditional gender roles dictate a division of labour where women predominantly handle home chores and subsistence farming, while men focus on cash crop production and paid work. Therefore, decisions concerning food and nutrition were/are solely left to the woman and, by extension, the making of the vessels that carry the food. Baskets are woven from plants: banana fibre, papyrus, raffia, palm leaves and stalks, reeds and grasses, each chosen for its flexibility, texture, and local availability. The basket s production requires deep ecological knowledge: Knowing where a certain grass grows, when its stems are strongest, how to strip it into thread, and which plants yield colourfast dyes.

I was surprised to learn that the kibbo or ekibbo , one of the most common baskets in Uganda, is made from banana plants. It is made from obukeedo and coiled around with the outer layer of enjulu, a papyrus-like reed found in wetlands. The kibbo is primarily used for carrying food, storage, and in the preparation and serving of matooke. Matooke is a staple food in Central Uganda and is also largely consumed in Western Uganda, as well as in Rwanda and Tanzania. It is one of several indigenous varieties of the East African Highland bananas that developed in Uganda despite bananas not being native to the region itself. Matooke is prepared in a variety of ways, popularly as mashed matooke, steamed and mashed in banana leaves, a signature dish from Buganda. It is usually accompanied by a groundnut paste that can be made plainly or cooked with dried mushrooms, smoked meat, smoked fish, or malewa⁴. Matooke is also prepared as whole fingers in katogo⁵ . Bananas are also used to make omubisi⁶, made from a banana variety called embidde and which can then be fermented to make a banana brew. Other common varieties include bogoya, a dessert banana served and eaten as fruit, ndiizi, the shorter and sweeter dessert type which is normally used to make kabalagala⁷ ; gonja, plantain which is prominently roasted and sold at roadside markets, and lastly kivuuvu, a plantain variety which is fatter and slightly less sweet compared to gonja, which is usually steamed with its peelings and served alongside other carbs like yam, pumpkin, sweet potatoes, and cassava.

Another intriguing case is the endiiro. It is an open topped subtly cylindrical basket with a fitted lid, made for serving millet bread common among the Batooro, and also used by the Banyankole from the Ankole⁸ tribe. Endiiro is made from millet straw, a by-product of finger millet harvest. Other tribes within the wider Rwenzori region in Western Uganda also incorporate millet stalks or straws as the core of their basket construction, which is wound over using raffia that was coloured with plant dyes sourced from nearby highlands. Finger millet is a staple amongst the Nilotic, Nilo-Hamitic and Bantu ethnic communities in Northern, Eastern, and Western Uganda, a cereal native to East Africa, which is said to have originated in the highlands of Uganda and Ethiopia. Finger millet is a nutrient dense cereal that thrives in a variety of environments and conditions making it lucrative for famine prone areas. It occupies 50% of Uganda’s cereal area, and is an integral part of cultural functions across Uganda. Millet is served at weddings, naming ceremonies, and during festivals celebrating a new harvest. It is consumed in a variety of forms, as millet bread usually accompanied by malakwang⁹ in northern Uganda; eshabwe¹⁰ and Firinda in western Uganda amongst farming and cattle-keeping communities; roasted meat in north-eastern Uganda amongst the nomadic communities; and with smoked fish in the east amongst fishing communities. Finger millet is also eaten as porridge, as a fermented drink, bushera, and as brew. Different varieties are used for specific consumption, for example amongst the Itesots from the Teso tribe the variety called emoru is preferred for making ajon, a beer used in the new harvest celebrations.

The making of both the food and the baskets is a highly physical and intuitive process. For instance, in the act of okuyubuguluza olulagala, the removal of the banana leaf stalk carefully and in a flat manner apt for cooking, one must keep the stalk intact so it can be shredded into obukeedo to construct ekibbo. This embodied knowledge has long been passed down from generation to generation, from older women to younger ones, an informal education that is increasingly shaping my practice and consequently my life. For our KLA ART project in 2024, my collaborator Birungi Kawooya and I explored how our foremothers cared for their bodies, focusing on the tale of Njabala. In it, a married and spoilt girl is guided by her mother's ghost on how to cultivate abakazi balima bati¹¹, a tenet of Ugandan culture. We analysed the emphasis of cultivation in this folklore and asked: Why was this the thing Njabala needed to learn from her mother? What does it mean to cultivate?

Women have been custodians of invaluable nutritional and ecological knowledge for ages, understanding which foods thrive in each season, which vegetables boost iron levels, and how to nurture their bodies in alignment with their monthly cycles and the changing annual seasons. As a guide to track time, farmers observed the movement of the moon, marking the progress of months and seasons. Similarly, women often tracked their menstrual cycles using the phases of the moon. To tend to the land was to care for their own bodies. It was customary (especially in Buganda) to plant fruit trees around the home and for women to grow vegetables and prepare them daily, especially steamed in banana leaves on top of carbohydrates. That way, they ensured dietary diversity that supported their health. Growing medicinal plants around the home, especially those that support women's reproductive health, was and continues to be an essential practice. In some communities, such as among the Basoga, women were and still are forbidden from engaging in certain activities during menstruation, such as harvesting palm leaves for weaving, based on the belief that the tree could disappear. These taboos, though seemingly restrictive, were actually a form of self-care, encouraging rest and honouring the natural rhythm of the body. Through these practices our foremothers became not only stewards of the land, but guardians of its wisdom. By simultaneously attuning themselves to the natural rhythms of both land and body, they embodied a profound connection to a greater consciousness and became vessels through which its knowledge flowed.

A large portion of the vegetables in diets across East Africa are wild, and certain communities, e.g.,in the Teso-Karamoja region continue to rely on wild edible plants, especially during food scarcity periods. As our wild landscapes gradually urbanise, so too do our food systems evolve, along with the vessels that support them. We are witnessing material evolutions in traditional practices, where plastic is continuously replacing natural materials, for example the use of hard plastic strands in the production of bikapu¹² and plastic rope in place of raffia. Plastic found its way into food preparation too, notably as a covering in addition or as an alternative to ndagala¹³ used in steaming foods like matooke or maize to better preserve moisture.

This shift reflects a broader inclination toward convenience and durability, where a combination of a rapidly growing population, changing living patterns, and rapid urbanisation create opportunities for the development of food products such as matooke flour and matooke biscuits; private beverage companies increasingly taking up the commercialisation of products like bushera and mubisi. All the while industrial agriculture, deforestation and swamp reclamation destroy the natural habitats of plants that serve as source for basketry materials: Swamps are drained for construction, native grasses are vanishing under commercial agriculture, and simultaneously global food systems introduce packed imports and plastic packages dislodging the need for and knowledge of traditional basketry.

Decoding the basket has opened up for me avenues of dialogue and interaction with my family,especially with my parents, with friends, and with the environment that did not exist before. My practice is gently evolving into a conversation: between materials, traditions, people, and the environment. I no longer see baskets for the handmade decorative items they are typically reduced to, but as reflections of a resilient food system, an embodiment of care, adaptation, and restoration in the face of ecological and colonial disruption. From market stalls and home kitchens to ceremonial gatherings and gift exchanges, baskets—both archive and practice—remain an integral part of daily life across different cultures in the region. Each serving a purpose, carrying a form, and telling a story.

Being awakened to this birthed in me a renewed sense of purpose, one of taking a step back and allowing myself to flow to a rhythm of something larger than myself. Learning the subtle art of being a conduit; submitting to higher knowledge systems; letting place and material guide me; learning through participation, observation, and play—as I gradually become more cognisant with the cyclical and intricately interconnected relationships that shape our material cultures and food systems.

From: Brogan Aaron Mwesigwa

To: Sandra Knecht

Wednesday, 13. Aug., 13:35

Dear Sandra,

I hope you're well. It was nice to e-meet you.

To answer the question,

I first began to notice this relation, through my research on traditional Ugandan food in my Kumanyagana¹ project for KLA ART Festival. In Uganda, our meals are deeply seasonal, following seasons of planting and harvesting. We have two planting seasons, March and August–September, and two harvesting seasons, June–July and December–January. As a child I remember certain foods appearing in the market during certain periods of the year. Like the many trucks of Matooke² at the Market in Nakulabye in June and in December. Matooke is one of Uganda's most important food crops.

I never grew up on a farm nor participated in any long-term farming activity except taking care of my Auntie’s chickens one holiday in 2013. I was raised in the concrete jungle of Kampala, the capital city of Uganda, where we are mostly consumers and not producers. Fortunately, during some of my visits to the village, I did observe my grandmother observing the clouds, and certain weather conditions to tell when the rains would start. As I speak, these signs have become less reliable. I spoke to her recently and she told me how they hadn't received a drop of rain in over six months. Climate warming has shifted the seasons. Sometimes they come in too late or too heavy or not at all. This has disrupted planting seasons, food availability and to a great extent, even community gatherings tied to harvest seasons.

Looking forward to your reflections,

Warm regards, Brogan.

I was in Mexico a year ago, and since then I've been eating more corn, pineapple and avocado. Even though I know that both fruits are harmful to the environment and water supply when grown, I now buy them about once a month. I loved getting to know the culture in Mexico, which was previously unknown to me. Since then, I have enjoyed travelling very much, even though I am older now and do not speak any language other than our own well.

I hope you are well. All the best Sandra

Being a city child, visiting the village always felt like an adventure. I was allowed to go to the garden but, as the beloved ''visitor", I was excused from digging and planting. Still, I do remember planting a tree with my cousins. Last time I saw it, it had reached high into the skies. Sadly, we left that home behind.

Bukesa was also a place of many cultures. Our neighborhood included migrants from across East Africa and Indian families from Asia. Their shops were always filled with spices and grains. Ugandans are quick to adapt to other cultures but when it comes to food, we draw the line. So, my first taste of foreign dishes came only when I visited my Indian and Eritrean friends. They loved hot chili! I especially enjoyed Injera, the traditional Ethiopian and Eritrean flatbread made from teff flour. It has a spongy and slightly sour taste and it's eaten with all kinds of stew, with bean stew being my favorite.

Speaking of favorite, my favorite dish is rice (any kind) and bean stew, a meal I know how to prepare very well. Cooking is a part of many homes in Uganda. The majority cooks their own meals and the marketplaces have a variety of natural foods like Matooke, rice, maize flour, cassava, yams, Irish and sweet potatoes, pumpkins and plenty of fruits like pineapple, oranges, avocado; I love avocado and I eat one many times a week, jackfruits, mangoes and so many more. All these can be found all over the country but to serve the growing demand, some foods are imported from our neighboring countries like Kenya and Tanzania.

Bukesa had so few trees, that when it was hot, the heat could be unbearable. In 2009, at the age of 12, we had to leave due to gentrification, which swept away the place I once called home.

I have not travelled that much but my recent trip to Kenya saw me eat a lot of Ugali⁴ . Its taste is so different from ours in Uganda. They don't mix food with stew on the same plate. and here we do the mix whole heartedly.

What was it like, working as a public servant, and with refugees for 20 years?

When did you first discover that you're an artist? Was it from a young age or years later?

Best, Brogan

I once lived with Ethiopian people. That's why I eat a lot of traditional food from there. I love legumes, rice and injera. I love eating with my hands and dipping bread in the sauces. The spoon is my favorite piece of cutlery. I cook often, so that's all I need to eat.

Since I was in Mexico, I've been eating a lot more different tropical fruits like pineapple, bananas, mango and avocados. They're good for my body. But I also feel guilty about the climate, so I'm cutting down on them. We also have lots of great fruits here like plums, cherries, apples, pears and all kinds of berries.

I eat as many different plants as possible, at least 33 per week. Grains, beans, herbs, and right now lots of tomatillos, tomatoes, cucumbers, courgettes and various green vegetables from the garden. Every day we have salsas and homemade bread with eggs from our chickens. I believe this abundance is worth the hardships of living in the countryside.

I have been often to big cities in recent years, and I have always been overwhelmed and overstimulated. Most of the time, I sit at home alone and don't see or talk to many people. When I am in the city, I soak up everything I encounter, especially at markets, where I get to know the local culture.

I would love to travel to South Africa. I've only been to the north: Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia. As I don't tolerate heat very well, I'm not sure if there is ever a time when the temperature is below 30 degrees Celsius.

African food is what I know least about. There are so many different countries and cultures on this huge continent. I cook a lot with sumac. A friend of mine who lives in Mali always brings me some from her village. Its chocolatey, fermented flavor gives dishes that need to be cooked for a long time the necessary depth of flavor. I think that it's a shame that this wonderful spice is increasingly being replaced by Maggi⁵. I used to be very interested in the gentrification of taste by corporations such as Nestlé. It's a kind of colonization that robs people of their identity and makes them dependent on corporations that devour everything they can get their hands on.

I've never eaten matooke. I love yams and manioc. They remind me of root vegetables like our parsnips, but they're more neutral and have a completely different consistency. I could eat neutral- tasting porridge with a hot, spicy stew every day.

Do you eat meat? If so, what kind? How do you prepare it?

As a child, I loved museums. My mother had to take me there from a very early age. I was 8 years old when I first visited the Old Masters in the museum in Zurich. I think I would have liked to have done art even at a young age. But I didn't get any encouragement in that regard. So, I worked with refugees from Somalia, Lebanon, Brazil, Iran, Afghanistan, etc. I cooked with them and talked about the lives they had before they were taken in here in Switzerland.

I noticed that people who came from the countryside had enormous difficulty integrating into city life, and people who came from cities did not understand the countryside and its customs at all. So, I made this a special feature of my work. After that, I was able to connect much more by focusing on their cuisine and music. I think it would make things much easier if people from the countryside could live in the countryside and people from the city could live in cities. That would certainly lessen the shock, among other things.

Best regards, Sandra

You should try Matooke one day. It's even better when eaten with groundnut paste. I do eat a variety of meats; beef, pork, chicken, and goat. I have tasted mutton but I have never eaten rabbit. They are just too adorable for me to eat. When I prepare meat, I usually start by roasting it over fire with banana peelings for extra flavor. Then I boil it for a few minutes, drain the water, and let it dry a bit. Next, I fry the meat with vegetable cooking oil and onions, then add tomatoes, carrots, garlic and green paper on high heat. Once everything is soft and tender, I add spices like black pepper, paprika, and turmeric, then some water. I let it boil for 15 minutes, add a thickener like Royco⁷ and some salt, and let it simmer for another 20 minutes. The result is a thick, flavorful beef stew. You mention a lot of plant-based foods. Are you a vegetarian?

What kind of porridge do you like? I enjoy a mix of oats, soybean flour and milk, usually with a pancake made from wheat flour, bananas and two eggs, which I have for breakfast thrice a week. I love eating "Rolex"...not the watch! It's basically an omelet rolled inside a chapati, a soft thin, round flatbread made from wheat flour, water, and a bit of oil. It has a crispy surface. I like mine with raw tomatoes, cabbage, onions and avocado. Fun fact: the name comes from "rolled eggs", which quickly became "Rolex".

I haven't visited any art museums yet, but I would love to see the works of the masters in person. Claude Monet, Auguste Renoir, Rembrandt. I also can't forget Michelangelo and my favorite William-Adolphe Bouguereau.

Recently, I hosted a workshop with Congolese refugees. We ate Sombe, Ugali, and Kwanga – Congolese traditional foo – and talked about their lives in Uganda and how they came here. I live in a small town just outside the city Kampala. A decade ago, it was a village, but its identity has changed with urban development, migration, and social transition. There is a lot of construction as the city expands, and some of this transformation has become a key feature in my paintings, exploring how humans and nature navigate such changes.

Living in the countryside, how does the landscape influence your artistic practice and your exploration of ecological themes?

When I am older, I hope to live in the countryside. I am thinking about Kisoro district in the Kigezi region, often called the Switzerland of Uganda. It has beautiful, untouched landscapes with lush green hills and terraced fields similar to those in Switzerland, and I would love to be a farmer there too.

Warm regards, Brogan

For me, working with refugees and drug-addicted young people was very interesting and challenging. I loved dealing with so many different cultures and families, learning from them and accompanying them.

I started making art very late in life. I didn't plan to become an artist. When the Arab Spring began in 2010/2011, I wanted to take a break and decided to learn something that I didn't know much about but was interested in. That's how I ended up doing a master's degree in art. It's stayed that way until now. But I'm not sure if the art market is so good for my mental health. The pressure is enormous, especially since I make a living from it and don't have any other work. How are you doing with that?

All the best for you. Sandra