- Title
- Reconfiguring the Omweso board game: performing narratives of Buganda material culture
- Creator
- Kirumira, Rose Namubiru
- Date
- 2019
- Type
- text
- Type
- article
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/10962/145996
- Identifier
- vital:38487
- Identifier
- https://0-doi.org.wam.seals.ac.za/10.1162/afar_a_00460
- Description
- My artwork titled Nakulabye, which is 4 meters long and weighs 440 pounds, is an intimidating sculptural replica of the Omweso game board (Fig. 1). The wooden sculpture, twenty times larger than an average Omweso game board, includes four cane stools to sit on during play. Its composition is derived from a human face, and it has thirty-two pits (8 × 4) in the configuration of a mancala board. This sculpture was inspired by my engagement with a group of men that I visited in July 2016 in Nakulabye, a town in an urban area of Kampala City, Uganda. At the Nakulabye Omweso Club, a shop veranda in Nakulabye Town, these men play Omweso and chat against the backdrop of a small television that mostly screens British Premiere Leagues. Observing their exchanges, which seem to be informed by moves on the Omweso board and reveal strong, clearly gendered power dynamics, I became curious about the performative place of Omweso as a cultural artifact of the Baganda people.
- Format
- 14 pages, pdf
- Language
- English
- Relation
- african arts, Kirumira, R.N., 2019. Reconfiguring the Omweso Board Game: Performing Narratives of Buganda Material Culture. african arts, 52(2), pp.52-65., african arts volume 52 number 2 52 65 May 2019 1937-2108
- Rights
- Publisher
- Rights
- Use of this resource is governed by the terms and conditions of the African arts Statement (https://0-www.jstor.org.wam.seals.ac.za/journal/africanarts)
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| Thumbnail | File | Description | Size | Format | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| View Details | SOURCE1 | Reconfiguring the Omweso Board Game.pdf | 630 KB | Adobe Acrobat PDF | View Details |