Conversation: Xenson & Margaret Nagawa

Margaret Nagawa is a PhD candidate in Art History at Emory University. She examines monumental representations of the human body and their meanings at the intersection of sculpture and poetry, focusing on Uganda. Her scholarship draws on a range of sources, from archival research and oral histories to object-based study and participatory observation. Nagawa conducts research in Eastern Africa, the UK, and the USA to account for change and continuity across decades of sculpture’s dialogue with other arts, particularly poetry in its oral, written, and performed forms. In a recently curated traveling exhibition and book, Insistent Presence: Contemporary African Art from the Chazen Collection (Chazen Museum of Art, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2023), Nagawa traces representations of the body in works exploring themes of power and belonging through the presence or absence of the human form. She holds a Masters in Curating from Goldsmiths, University of London, UK, and a BA with First Class Honors in Fine Arts from the Margaret Trowell School of Fine and Industrial Arts, Makerere University. The talk will be held on-site in NCAI’s library and resource center from 2:00 pm. The conversation will be recorded and made available on the website soon.