Wakaliga Uganda

Chisenhale Gallery presents Kibuuka Omumbaale, a major new video commission and the first UK exhibition by Kampala-based collective Wakaliga Uganda. The exhibition introduces a subversive take on the superhero action film, through which the artists explore the spiritual heritage of Kibuuka Omumbaale, a warrior-god of the Kingdom of Buganda. Made collaboratively with the Wakaliga community using bricolaged methods, the video follows the entanglement of Kibuuka's sacred remains with histories of British colonialism, and the inheritances of power that arise through their confrontation with contemporary society.

Kibuuka Omumbaale takes as its starting point one of the earliest acts of cultural restitution in British history: the 1961 repatriation of Kibuuka Omumbaale's remains from the University of Cambridge to the Uganda Museum in Kampala. The restoration of these relics was woven into the formation of an independent Ugandan state, becoming one of the first acts through which the new state performed its sovereignty.

In a present-day setting, a teenager named Isaak comes into contact with the display of these remains during a school trip at the Uganda Museum. He unexpectedly acquires Kibuuka's supernatural powers, becoming an embodiment of the warrior-god. Interspersed with commentary from community elders, spiritual healers, and museum tour guides, the film follows news coverage of a mysterious killer whose behaviour matches oral histories of the warrior-god. As events escalate to involve Uganda's First Lady, the response from the president and military draws a contemporary society into confrontation with the spirit of one of its ancestors.

This exhibition continues the grassroots filmmaking legacy of Wakaliga Uganda, who have established a film studio in Kampala's Wakaliga district. Founded by Isaac Nabwana and Harriet Nakasujja, the collective has gained cult status for producing moving image works that appropriate and rework the visual grammars of Western action films, Cantonese martial arts cinema, and YouTube virality. DIY strategies and collaborative modes of production are mobilised to create the explosive sequences and high-octane storytelling of their films. Recurring cast and crew members assemble props, costumes, and sets with found materials; train each other in skills such as martial arts and CGI; and contribute to the screenwriting of Wakaliga Uganda's playful, incisive critiques of global power dynamics.

Kibuuka Omumbaale draws on the mystical traditions of Hong Kong martial arts cinema, a genre widely embraced among Ugandan audiences since the 1960s, in which mythological transformation, spiritual possession, and kinetic action coexist within popular storytelling. It layers this cinematic form with the VJ, a Ugandan tradition in which a comedic narrator, or ‘video joker', improvises commentary and emotional interpretation over action. Through these combinations, it approaches global film genre conventions as tokens of the exchange between historic and contemporary states that can be reappropriated, satirised, and subverted.

Exploring the idea of worldbuilding under the conditions of violence, the video examines the superhero as a grassroots, vernacular figure, one assembled through collective filmmaking rather than the industrial apparatus of the studio system. In Kibuuka Omumbaale, how the repatriated hero's role can be played today remains an open question, asking what power spiritual heritage may hold upon its return home.

Wakaliga Uganda are a film collective from Kampala, Uganda. Their selected exhibitions include: If Uganda Was America, The Renaissance Society, Chicago, 2025; and documenta fifteen, Kassel, 2022. Selected screenings include MoMA, New York, 2019.