CYSK #36: Mona Taha
Visual Artist
Muraho/Mbote.
I spent an afternoon this week at the Frieze art fair in New York. I am always curious to see trends and trace throughlines in the work on display. For a few years, there was a lot of bold portraiture — which I enjoyed — but lately I have been noticing a move towards something much more personal and domestic, which I find thrilling. It is reflected in the extraordinary, meditative work of Kenyan artist April Kamunde (CYSK #23) and in the way the South African-Malawian artist Billie Zangewa (CYSK #14) delicately documents her daily life on silk tapestries, as well as in the brilliance of Ayotunde Ojo’s contemplative paintings of the everyday (CYSK #18). This week’s Creative You Should Know is Mona Taha, and her work similarly explores themes of selfhood, femininity, and identity. After taking a year off, she is back with a new exhibition titled ‘A Walk in Makindye’ inspired by her daily walks through a neighbourhood in Kampala called Makindye. Working with watercolours, ink, and collage, among other things, the work captures moments of connection and contemplation. If you are in Kampala, do go and see it. The details can be found here.
You were born to a Rwandese mother and an Egyptian father and grew up in Uganda — three very different cultures. Has one had more creative influence on you than the others?
I would say it’s a mix. My father was not so imposing of his culture, besides the religion — Islam, of course, which takes up most of what his culture means in practice. But he was pretty liberal with regards to things like how we dressed. So I adapted more to Ugandan and Rwandese culture, which are similar — it’s all East African. I would say mostly Ugandan.
You are largely self-taught. What do you think formal training might have given you — or taken away?
I think formal training could have given me an early start with different mediums. I was pretty green about so many of them and had to learn along the professional path. And I would say community — the idea of being an artist is not something I was exposed to, and I think that also played a part in delaying my entry into the arts. It would have been a boost to have gone there early. But I believe everything happens at the right time.
What did that lack of exposure look like?
In education — and I think this is something common to African, Asian, and Arab communities — the arts are not something that is encouraged or well understood. Not to say that it didn’t exist, but I think it is perhaps something post-colonial, where there’s more focus on a particular kind of work. So I ended up doing economics, and I got out feeling pretty lost for a while.
Where did art come in? When did you start to realise it was something you wanted to pursue?
I didn’t even know. I just drew because I liked it. I never really thought about art as a career option. My earliest memories of loving it would be boarding school — given the lack of entertainment, one of the things we used to do was sit around in the dormitory and draw each other, draw our teachers, sometimes as caricatures. But I didn’t think too much about it. If anything, I thought my brother was the talented one. He was into graphics and was naturally artistic. I carried on drawing just for the sake of it — even at university, studying economics, I would sit around in the hostel and draw. People remember these things and come back to tell you years later. I did go to galleries occasionally. I remember going to Afriart before it moved to where it is now, just looking at the work and thinking: who are these people, where did they learn all of this? And then I would forget about it, pick up a sketchbook, and post pictures of amateur drawings on Facebook with the hashtag ‘amateur drawing.’ That was pretty much it for a while.
What was the turning point — the moment something shifted?
While I was doing family business and other work, I kept posting my amateur drawings on Facebook. I started to notice there was genuine interest in the work. People would comment, and I would look at it and think, I don’t think it’s that good. But then the interest got deeper. I think once I had kids and was really trying to make sense of the direction my life was taking — I don’t know if I would call it a quarter-life crisis, but towards thirty I started to really question things. I was journaling, and then I started drawing images that felt like what I was writing. I would post them on Facebook. I think that’s what attracted the attention of a gallery that was looking for female artists who drew at the time. They invited me to an artist development programme, and that is how it all began.
You work across charcoal, inks, collage, graphite — but I’m particularly drawn to your use of charcoal. What does charcoal give you that other mediums don’t?
Drawing came naturally to me, partly because of my limited experience with other mediums at the time. But it was during the artist development programme that another artist introduced me to charcoal. I had not known about it before — he pointed out that these pencils that are darker are charcoal, and something just clicked. The texture worked for me, but more than that, it could convey a rawness, a boldness, that I couldn’t get with graphite. There is only so much dark you can achieve with graphite. Charcoal gave me room to actually experiment — I learnt about charcoal powder, the different forms, soft and hard, and how to play with them to create lines. It gave me back a freedom I had been looking for in my drawing, and that freedom also became a theme in the work itself.
You have spoken about art as therapy, as rebellion. How do those things apply in your own life?
Art gives me purpose. I didn’t know there were things I wanted to express about my own womanhood, and my personal experiences. It also gave me a place to reflect on the experiences of other women in my community. During a period when I had become a single mother, it gave me back a sense of independence and self — a way of redeeming yourself, I would say. But also an income, as a single mum at the time. Art kind of saved me in that way. But it really is, and continues to be, a place where I reflect on my own womanhood and on the world more broadly. It is a meditative practice that allows me to zone out. In that space, I own myself — I own me. It is my most peaceful place. It is, I think, the purest form of myself. It is where I can play, where I can question things, and where I can just be still with the things that give me peace.
Your drawings have often been self-portraits, but your most recent work feels like a departure from that. You also took a break before starting it. Can you tell me about that reset — what prompted it, and how you arrived where you are now?
Technically, I was trying to discover colour. But I was also searching for a satisfaction from the work that I was not entirely finding. It had started to feel like routine, and joy in the way I work is really important to me. Personally, I went through a period where I could not provide through my art, which can be a blow to an artist’s ego. I had to reassess what art means to me — to get back to how I want it to make me feel, how I choose to feel empowered beyond it being a way to provide for my family. So I started taking walks and really sitting with myself. I began to notice more. Before, my focus had been very much on the figurative — the woman, her inner world reflected in her body, her poses and positions. But on these walks, it started to shift. I was still reflecting on the inner landscape, but through actual landscape. I noticed all these shades in the environment, all this life. And I felt that charcoal could not quite take me where I wanted to go with those feelings. So I took time to really understand where I wanted to go with colour. I spent a while learning oil paints, which taught me a lot. But oil and water-based mixed mediums are quite different in how you apply them, and I found my way back to mixed media — it was simply more comfortable and more enjoyable.
Your latest exhibition is called Walk in Makindye. Can you tell us a little about the neighbourhood and your relationship with it?
Makindye is a place where all classes meet. It is hilly, with a lot of nature — though there are so many developments now, unfortunately. To give you a sense of what my walks look like: I go up a steep hill, I pass boxers from the local boxing club, teenagers. There is a narrow road where students like to walk, couples wrapped in each other. There are lots of trees, lots of dogs. People love walking there. During COVID, I think it was a healing place for so many people. They came out to walk, to find community, to get out of the house.
What does this exhibition say about where you are now as an artist?
When I took time out to heal my spirit — I like to call it that — I was invited to a local residency in Kampala, run by an incubator space called Afropocene. It was a wellbeing residency, a kind of inquiry into our practice: why we do what we do, the themes that come up and why they matter. There was no expectation to produce work at the end of it — just to guide us in our practices. Through that period, which was very healing, I realised that joy was something I had really been looking for. Coming to that place of joy meant being playful, experimenting, exploring different mediums that could communicate colour in the way I wanted — something flowing, ethereal. It also took me back to work I had made before. While I was working with charcoal, I had made drawings with mixed media and included collage — and when I cut out pieces, I never threw away what was left. I kept them in boxes. I started opening those boxes and finding: oh, I could actually use this. It is full of colour, it is rich. The current work is a reflection of coming to a place of acceptance — of myself as an artist, of the fact that this is something I truly love and need. It gives me space to explore, to experiment, to be spontaneous. The paper collages were there all along. I just needed time to figure out how to put them together. It is playful, like putting puzzle pieces together to create something that works.
Are there any conversations happening in contemporary African art right now that excite you? How do you feel about the scene in Uganda specifically?
I think there is a much broader discovery of mediums — people are now working with material art, and I don’t want to suggest this is new. African culture has always included sculpture, material art, and functional pieces. I love that these are being highlighted, because they were naturally here all along. The bark cloth grows on the mutuba tree here. The beadwork was already practised by communities of women here. I love it. I am also excited because there seem to be so many artist-run spaces emerging, which means more artists will be able to find the support they need. The market is the other thing that really has to be worked on — how do we develop our own African-backed markets without depending on external forces? I think we all saw something telling during COVID, in the wave of interest in Black figurative painting. The idea of that being positioned as a wave or a trend is a strange thing, because it is simply a representation of who we are. Every day for us. The fact that it could be framed that way tells you that the market is run by particular external forces. I know it will take time, but we are trying to build our own.
What influences your visual world — music, literature, film, anything you have been drawn to recently?
I think I shift according to what I am working with. When I was working with charcoal, I was really pulled towards strong female charcoal artists — the themes they were exploring felt bold and weighty, and charcoal felt like the right medium to carry that. Once I moved into colour, I started thinking about artists like Georgia O’Keeffe — the way she decided to draw from what was simply in front of her. Flowers, or the landscape around her when she moved away from the city. The simplicity of that means something to me. A flower could mean anything. Colour could mean anything. And there is something in that openness that I keep drawing from.
CREATIVES MONA THINKS YOU SHOULD KNOW:
Sanaa Gateja - There are a couple of masters here in Uganda that I really look up to. I love his work deeply. He explores beadwork and the work of communities.
Joseph Ntensibe — He explores nature and colour and layers. It is work I have been drawn to right from the first time I saw it.
These artists are in their later careers, and I think that is beautiful. It speaks to a journey of consistency — of not giving up on something you love. That is something I really, truly look up to.
The Nigerian artist Damilola Illori has an exhibition at One Art Gallery in Lagos running until May 30, 2026. Damilola (CYSK #29) is an exceptional artist. You can read his interview here.
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(Special thanks to Lara Buchman at AAG for her help with this edition).
Back in a fortnight.
Welldone Mona great work
I love every interview and this one is no exception. Thanks for the great work!