Dambudzo Marechera
Zimbabwean novelist and short story writer

Marecheras book 'The house of Hunger' 1978 resonates with my practice because it examines what happens when identity is fractured by colonialism, displacement, violence, and the instability of memory. Like Marechera, I am interested in the psychological and spiritual consequences of inhabiting worlds shaped by postcolonial rupture both home and abroad. His “hunger” is not simply physical; it is a hunger for belonging and self-understanding. This same search underpins my work.Throughout my practice, I return to objects, rituals, family stories, and ancestral knowledge as ways of reconstructing a self that exists between Rwanda, Uganda, and the diaspora. Similarly, Marechera’s writing is driven by a fragmented consciousness attempting to make sense of inherited trauma and social collapse. His refusal of a singular narrative mirrors my own resistance to fixed identities, instead embracing contradiction, and incomplete histories.His writing frequently portrays home as both refuge and site of violence. This echoes my investigation of compounds, churches, kitchens, and communal homes as spaces where care, authority, discipline, and fear coexist. These environments become moral architectures that shape behaviour and memory rather than neutral settings.

Marechera also writes that "the house was my mind," suggesting that physical and psychological landscapes cannot be separated. This idea strongly relates to my practice, where architecture, ritual, and material culture function as extensions of memory and identity. The churches, compounds, beads, and inherited objects I work with are not simply representations of history; they are active structures through which history continues to live.

I found that ultimately, both Marechera's work and my own practice are concerned with recovering meaning from fragmentation. 

Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi
Ugandan novelist

Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi's Kintu(2014) became highly relevant to my practice because it explores how identity is shaped by ancestry, inherited memory and spirituality. Rather than presenting history as a fixed sequence of events, Makumbi portrays it as something carried through families, bodies, rituals, and belief systems. This directly relates to my exploration of ancestral knowledge, conversations with elders, spiritual practices, and the material traces of heritage embedded within everyday life.

One passage that resinated with me in Kintu states that "history is a fabric of memories and fear and forgetting, of longing and nostalgia, of invention and re-creation." (Makumbi, 2018, p. 12) This reflects my use of archival research, oral histories, and ritual objects as methods of reconstructing fragmented narratives of belonging across  Rwanda and Uganda. Like Makumbi, I am interested not in recovering a singular truth but in understanding how memory is continually remade.

Makumbi also writes, "The mind was a curse: its ability to go back in time to regret and hop into the future to hope and worry was not a blessing." (Makumbi, 2018, p. 364) This tension between memory and anticipation echoes my investigation of postcolonial inheritance, where the past remains active within the present. My work seeks to understand how cultural memory survives displacement. Like Kintu (2014) it proposes that identity is not individual but collective,a living archive shaped by generations that continue to speak through us.
 

Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o
Kenyan author and academic

Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o's work has been influential to my practice because it provides a framework for understanding how colonialism operates not only through land and politics, but through culture, memory, and language itself. In Decolonising the Mind(1986), Ngũgĩ argues that language is never neutral; it carries histories, values, and ways of seeing the world. For him, the replacement of African languages with European ones was a form of cultural domination that disconnected people from their histories and indigenous knowledge systems.

This perspective directly informed my decision to include Kinyarwanda within my work, particularly in 'My Daily Motion'. By concealing the voice-over from non-Kinyarwanda speakers, I resist the expectation that all cultural knowledge must be translated for external audiences. The work acknowledges language as a carrier of cultural code, preserving aspects of oral tradition that are often lost when filtered through colonial languages.

Ngũgĩ's ideas also allowed me to reflect on the historical significance of coded language within Rwanda itself. Through this work, I commemorate the Abiru, the royal advisors of the pre-colonial Kingdom of Rwanda, who were custodians of sacred knowledge and court rituals. The Abiru developed specialised forms of communication, symbolism, and interpretation that could only be fully understood within their circle. By withholding translation and privileging Kinyarwanda, I draw parallels between these historical knowledge systems and contemporary questions of cultural access, preservation, and sovereignty.

I was drawn to Ngũgĩ because his writing validates language as a living archive. Following his thinking, I understand language not simply as communication but as a repository of memory, identity, and ancestral knowledge.
 
Édouard Glissant French writer and poet

In works such as Poetics of Relation (1990), Glissant argues that cultures are formed through encounters, exchanges, and movement across time and geography. This perspective resonates strongly with my experience of growing up between Rwanda and Uganda and later navigating life across seas.

What I took from Glissant is his concept of Relation: the idea that identity is shaped through connections rather than isolation. This helped me move beyond searching for a pure or singular origin and instead embrace the complexity of belonging to multiple histories, languages, and cultural traditions simultaneously. His work gave me a framework for understanding East Africa not as a collection of separate national identities, but as an interconnected cultural landscape with shared histories and lineages. I applied these ideas through my references to both the Abachwezi of Uganda and the Abiru of Rwanda, as well as through the use of materials sourced from different African regions. These elements create dialogues across borders, reflecting Glissant's belief that cultural meaning emerges through exchange and connection.

I was drawn to Glissant because he rejects rigid definitions of identity.

Wangechi Mutu
Kenyan visual artist

I was drawn to Wangechi Mutu's work long before I began thinking critically about my own practice. What initially captivated me was her ability to bring together seemingly unrelated fragments;textures, images, materials and transform them into something cohesive. Her collages never appear forced; each element feels as though it belongs, despite originating from different sources. There is a sense of harmony within complexity that I find deeply compelling.

This approach resonates with my own experience of identity. Having roots in both Rwanda and Uganda, while also navigating life in the England. I often find myself piecing together different cultural influences, memories, and histories. Mutu's work demonstrated that fragmentation does not have to signify loss or disconnection. Instead, it can become a method of construction, allowing new meanings and relationships to emerge.

Her practice gave me permission to embrace multiplicity within my own work. Whether through layering archival material with contemporary footage in my films, or combining beads, recycled materials, paint, and found objects in sculptural pieces, I use assemblage as a way of reflecting the interconnected nature of memory and heritage. What I admire most about Mutu is her ability to create beauty from complexity without simplifying it. Her work reminds me that disparate histories, places, and experiences can coexist within a single form while retaining their individual significance, much like the layered identities and cultural inheritances that inform my practice.

Moor Mother Musician 

Moor Mother's practice has been important to my work because of her ability to transform history into an experience rather than simply a subject. Her music exists somewhere between poetry, protest, archive, and sound art, collapsing the boundaries between them. What I find most compelling is that her work does not ask for comfort or approval; it demands attention. She confronts the listener with histories that have been ignored, erased, or deliberately forgotten, using sound as a means of making those histories impossible to avoid.

Her song "Deadbeat Protest" particularly resonates with my practice. The layering of spoken word with abrasive, fragmented sound creates a feeling of tension and unease that mirrors the instability of the histories she addresses. The work is not concerned with producing a polished narrative but with exposing the fractures beneath it. Listening to the piece feels like moving through memory itself: disjointed, emotional, and haunted by what remains unresolved.

This approach has influenced how I think about sound within my own work. Rather than treating audio as a supporting element, I use it as a carrier of cultural memory. Through Kinyarwanda speech, ritual soundscapes, oral histories, and references to East African spiritual traditions, I attempt to create encounters that communicate knowledge as much as emotion. Like Moor Mother, I am interested in how sound can hold multiple truths at once—personal, historical, spiritual, and political. Her work showed me that art can function as a form of remembrance, allowing voices, stories, and ways of knowing that exist outside official archives to remain present and active.

The secretive Cult of Kubandwa

Research into the Kubandwa spiritual tradition became important to my practice because it revealed alternative systems of knowledge that have survived despite colonial suppression and religious conversion. Often described as a spirit-possession cult found across Rwanda, Uganda, Burundi, and parts of East Africa, Kubandwa exists within a space between spirituality, performance, healing, and communal memory. What interested me most was not only its secrecy but the way knowledge is transmitted through ritual, oral tradition, song, movement, and initiation rather than through written records.The research connected strongly with my interest in Nalubaale traditions in Uganda, where spirits are understood as active participants within the world rather than distant entities.

I was challenged in my understanding of where knowledge resides and who has the authority to preserve it. Much of my work explores forms of cultural memory that exist outside institutional archives, and Kubandwa provided a framework for thinking about memory as something embodied and performed.

 Knowledge within the tradition is activated through participation, requiring presence, repetition, and communal engagement.

I applied this research through my use of ritual processes, sound, and material symbolism. Rather than presenting information directly, I became interested in creating works that reveal themselves gradually, allowing some meanings to remain partially obscured. This approach reflects the ways sacred knowledge is often protected within spiritual traditions. The research also reinforced my interest in ancestral practices as living systems rather than historical artefacts. Kubandwa demonstrated how spirituality can function as a method of preserving identity, continuity, and collective memory across generations, despite periods of displacement, colonial intervention, and cultural transformation. This became a significant reference point in my exploration of East African heritage and the relationship between ritual, memory, and belonging.

Divination scene

The composition of the divination scene was informed by photographic documentation of ritual practices from the Great Lakes region (pgkivu, 2015).

The divination scene functions as a meeting point between the visible and invisible, a space where knowledge is sought beyond conventional systems of understanding. Throughout East Africa, divination has historically operated as a means of consulting ancestors, spirits, and inherited wisdom in moments of uncertainty, illness, transition, or conflict. Rather than predicting a fixed future, these practices often serve to interpret relationships between people, memory, place, and the spiritual realm.I am interested in divination as an act of listening. It requires patience, interpretation, and a willingness to engage with forms of knowledge that cannot always be measured or translated. By reconstructing a divination scene, I create a space in which personal memory, ancestral inheritance, and spiritual inquiry intersect. The work becomes less about receiving answers and more about cultivating a relationship with the histories, voices, and traditions that continue to shape my understanding of self.

Thenjiwe Nxumalo-Parsley

Ungenaphi Movement two 

Midnight Swami's 'ungenaphi?: [movement two] not totally strangers' was particularly influential to my practice because it demonstrated how research can be transformed into a sensory experience rather than remaining confined to text. The performance combines moving image, archival material, live looping, sampling, and the uhadi calabash bow to create what Swami describes as "sonics as auto theory." Rather than explaining ideas directly, theory is embodied through sound, rhythm, and feeling.

What I took from this work was the possibility of using sound as a form of storytelling and knowledge production. Swami treats the DJ set as an instrument and a narrative device, using improvised sound to communicate experiences of desire, displacement, and belonging between Johannesburg, Cape Town, London, and the body itself. This resonated with my own interest in oral histories, ritual practices, and ancestral memory, where knowledge is often transmitted through performance rather than written archives.

The work also reinforced my interest in non-Western forms of knowledge. By incorporating indigenous instruments, archival fragments, and personal experience into a single sonic environment, Swami challenges the idea that research must be communicated through academic language alone. This directly informed my use of soundscapes, Kinyarwanda voiceovers, ritual repetition, and East African spiritual references. Like Swami, I became interested in creating works that are felt before they are fully understood, allowing sound to carry memory, emotion, and cultural knowledge simultaneously.
 

Fi Sonola 

Gamemasters Drama 

Fi Sonola's 'Gamemasters Drama' became an important reference within my practice because of its exploration of human behaviour, power, and psychological manipulation. The performance examines the ways individuals navigate systems that are often invisible but yet deeply influential, exposing how authority, competition, desire, and social conditioning shape decision-making. Rather than presenting psychology as a purely scientific subject, Sonola reveals it as something enacted through everyday interactions, rituals, and performances of power.

What I took from this work was an understanding that behaviour is often learned rather than innate. The performance highlights how people internalise rules, expectations and hierarchies. Often without recognising the forces that produced them. This directly connected to my own research into religion, colonial influence, and communal structures in Rwanda and Uganda. Growing up, I became aware of how ritual, discipline, and authority shaped behaviour through repetition, whether within churches, family compounds, or educational environments.

I applied these ideas by examining how inherited belief systems become embedded within the body and psyche. My work investigates the ways colonial, religious, and familial structures continue to influence identity long after their origins have been forgotten. Through ritualised actions, repetition, sound, and storytelling, I explore how people absorb cultural codes and reproduce them across generations. Sonola's performance encouraged me to think beyond visible histories and instead focus on the psychological architectures that govern memory, obedience, belonging, and self-perception.