‘The Riddle of Bakuli’ from artist Said Adrus expresses a personal journey in which he shares his South Asian narrative within an East African context.

 

Bakuli, a district of Kampala, is retraced as part of a larger artistic project - a ‘montage’ of film, stills and sound with the potential of becoming an expansive installation. This iteration presented on dm platform represents a flashpoint for an interlaced relationship between postcolonial historical work and contemporary digital aesthetics.  The piece draws upon artwork created during Said’s research, for which the artist visited Kampala, Uganda, the city where he was born but which he left as a child, forty years ago, because of the country’s political situation. He was displaced to Switzerland in the 1970s, before arriving in the UK.

 

Mobility, persecution and migration remain urgent issues today. For Said, these life-changing events have been a key influence, like threads woven through all his work.