Objects, spaces and gestures converge in a single frame: the portrait becomes an inventory of how identity is built and read.
Henry "Mzili" Mujunga (born Henry Brian Mujunga, 1971, Uganda) is a painter, printmaker, conceptual artist and writer, among the most influential figures of contemporary East African art. He trained at the Margaret Trowell School of Industrial and Fine Arts of Makerere University, Kampala, graduating with honours, and holds a Postgraduate Diploma in Education from the same institution. In 2003 he was the Ugandan winner of the Royal Overseas League (ROSL) Art Scholarship, followed by a residency at Hospitalfield, Arbroath, in the United Kingdom; in 2004 he took part in "Overcoming Maps", the study tour and exhibition project of the Pan African Circle of Artists across Nigeria, Benin, Togo, Burkina Faso, Mali and Ghana, and in 2008 he received a Goethe-Institut travel scholarship to Dak'Art.
Mzili's paintings reference his immediate environment, both natural and man-made, to construct scenarios of heroism that champion human strength and empathy. His compositions bring together numerous, seemingly disparate objects within a single frame, set in intimate spaces where highly personal interactions take place, often merging several such spaces into one, with titles that describe the interactions depicted while alluding to external associations. This gathering of objects, spaces and associations mirrors the processes of identity-making he observes in Uganda, where individuals rely on appearance, possessions and surroundings to communicate their vision of themselves, while others read those same signs to interpret the people around them. An indigenous expressionist by his own definition, Mzili works from intuition, childhood memory and trained practice, pursuing awe and pleasure through colour in autobiographical compositions that open onto the identities of urban Kampala.
His practice is inseparable from his role as an organizer and thinker of the East African scene: he is a founding member of the artist group Index Mashariki, dedicated to re-establishing the relevance of art in the local community through indigenous expressionism, a member of the Pan African Circle of Artists, co-founder of the Kampala Arts Trust and of the online journal Start Journal of Arts and Culture, and served as the first curator of the Kampala Art Biennale in 2014. His work has been exhibited across Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Nigeria, Togo, Benin, Burkina Faso, Mali, Ghana, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, South Africa and the Netherlands, with appearances including "Eastern Voices" at Addis Fine Art, London (2023), South-South Veza (2021), 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair in New York and London, ARCO Lisbon, Investec Cape Town Art Fair, ART X Lagos and FNB Joburg Art Fair. In 2024-2025 Afriart Gallery, Kampala, celebrated his career with the retrospective "25 Years: 1999-2024", spanning his printmaking, mixed-media painting and recent large-scale canvases. His dialogue with the Italian scene includes a video conversation with curator Antonella Pisilli recorded in 2020 for "Decameron Quarantine Art Diary", the gallery's series of interviews with African artists conceived during the pandemic lockdown, available on the gallery's channels. His works are held in international collections including the Arak Collection. He lives and works in Kampala.