Lilian Nabulime

Lilian Mary Nabulime is a prominent Ugandan sculptor, and senior lecturer of Sculpture at the Margaret Trowell School of Fine Arts, Kampala. She uses a range of materials including clay, stone and wood to create expressive works that embody social and feminist agendas and attempt to promote discussion as well as pushing the meaning of art beyond the visual.

Nabulime holds a PhD in Fine Art from Newcastle University, UK. She has exhibited her work worldwide with multiple solo and group exhibitions in the USA, UK, Norway and Sweden. She has also been the recipient of many awards and fellowships, including the Commonwealth Fellowship Award, UK in 1997 and 2012. She has participated in residencies at the Bezalel Art Academy and the School of Fine Art in Israel. Nabulime has been profiled by the Almas Art Foundation, which catalogued and showed her work at Somerset House in London in 2023.

Nabulime created this painting in 1998 as she was beginning her transition into sculpture. Waiting belongs to a small group of paintings which were exhibited along with her sculptures by Kampala’s Weganda Gallery in 2025. The work is a rare example of Nabulime’s practice as a painter and was inspired by a personal experience in which she received a lift from a stranger while travelling from Berlin to Munich.