Geoffrey Mukasa

Geoffrey Mukasa was born in 1954 to one of Uganda’s most prominent doctors. Many people expected Mukasa to follow his father’s footsteps but the murder of his father during Idi Amin’s coup brought drastic changes to his life; he left Uganda and began studying art.

Mukasa travelled to India to study at Lucknow University, graduating in 1984. India greatly inspired Mukasa, exposing him to European and Indian aesthetic values. He threw himself into his work with vigour, focusing mainly on human relationships with the environment, interactions between humans and every day living. In the early 1990s, upon returning to Uganda, Mukasa became a key figure in the movement to revive cultural life in Uganda. This cultural movement was seen as a unifying force and an inspiration for the nation’s recovery from years of military dictatorship.