Ugandan artist Stacey Gillian Abe uses glass as her primary medium to construct sculptures that reflect on the objectification of women in Uganda. “I love shiny things, that’s why I work with glass. What’s more I relate to the dual personalities of glass: liquid and hard. As a young Ugandan woman I am also both fragile and hard at the same time,” she states in an interview with IAM Magazine.
At the pop-up exhibition (Re)Thinking Feminism & Black Womanhood that formed part of the Kampala Art Biennale 2016, Abe engaged with this central issue directly through chocolate as a medium. When asked about her work she expressed that, “I want to confront people with how men look at women in our society, because it’s a taboo subject here. First they look at our bodies, as if we are just candy for consumption.” Abe created vaginas in different shapes, forms and colours and presented them as chocolates, served on a dish at a set table as a way to emphasize that “All women are unique”. But this work also speaks to how women have been treated as objects of desire and consumption.
Her glass work continues this gesture towards highlighting how women are treated, as well as attempts to direct viewers to a more empowering and holistic attitude towards women. An example of this was a site-specific glass installation titled Strange Fruit Konyagi that she produced while at a residency in Tanzania. Through the use of Konyagi [a spirit produced in Tanzania] bottles hung in clusters in the shape of the Tanzanian Neem tree, she aimed to present a woman as a “nurturer and giver of life”. The significance of the bottles, Abe explains, is “from a more traditional African point of view. Bottles also signify conjuring and capturing spiritual entities. You can see the bottles hanging from the Neem tree as holding the answer to what lies beyond the known world.” This work reflected on the difficulties women can face when being forced to find a balance between traditional and modern understandings of what it means to be a women, while searching for their own definition of womanhood.
Due to the fact that most of her works are displayed in public spaces, this forces both men and women to be confronted by gender misconceptions and the oppression of women in her community.
Check out Abe’s website to look through more of her work.
