Uganda's 'Bead King' Sanaa Gateja shows paper-bead works in Kampala until 21 November

Ugandan artist Sanaa Gateja, known in Uganda as "The Bead King", has a solo show, "They Too Are the Earth", at Afriart Gallery, Plot 110-112, 7th Street, Industrial Area, Kampala, from 19 September to 21 November 2026. The curator is Daudi Karungi. According to the gallery's press release, the show brings together Gateja's paper-bead works on bark cloth, new works on banana fibre and found root sculptures.

Gateja, born in 1950, has made art from rolled paper beads since he came home to Uganda in 1990. "1990 is when I started doing the bead work in Uganda," he said in a 2018 interview with the website Africanah.

The title comes from a poem by the Nigerian poet Niyi Osundare. The gallery's text says the show asks what becomes possible "when we look again at the things we have been taught to overlook". Discarded paper, banana fibre, bark cloth, raffia, roots and weathered wood, it says, "are not passive matter" in his hands.

Two works are reproduced in the press release. "Healing" (2026) is paper beads and acrylics on bark cloth, 206 by 98 centimetres. "Messenger of Peace" (2026) is found wood and volcanic stone, 51 by 20 by 65 centimetres.

One group of works uses a book on the Ugandan artist Henry Mzili Mujunga, whose pages Gateja recycled into beads. The curator's text calls this "not an erasure, but a form of preservation and transmission". The root sculptures, it adds, are shaped by "soil, weather, fire, insects, animals, and time" before he finds them.

Gateja's own account of how he got there starts with paper. In a 2018 feature by the paper maker Arctic Paper he said he found a paper bead in an art-class rubbish bin while teaching in London, took it home to study and began making his own. "I brought the skill with me to Uganda," he said. The gallery's biography says he moved to Kisoro at five, studied interior design in Florence and jewellery design in London, and after returning in 1990 started community projects teaching paper-bead making to women and youth.

The route ran through Kenya first. Karma, the New York gallery that shows him, says he moved to Mombasa in 1972 and opened Sanaa Gallery, selling traditional Kenyan crafts, above all beadwork. His CV on the gallery's site lists Nairobi shows at the Rowland Ward Gallery and the African Heritage Gallery in 1980, at the Kenya National Museum in 1990 and at the French Cultural Centre in 2012. The Victoria and Albert Museum's record says the Kenya National Museum also holds his work.

Before Mombasa, the CV says, he was assistant crafts officer at Uganda's Ministry of Culture and Community Development and in 1970 managed the Uganda Crafts Pavilion at Expo 70 in Osaka.

Some of his material comes from the street. In the Arctic Paper feature he described finding Chinese propaganda magazines along the streets of Kampala, very colourful and glossy and well suited to beads. He also made a large wall piece, "CHANGE", from press material of Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign; it was shown at the Museum of Arts and Design in New York in 2010.

He also teaches the craft. His CV lists the Kwetu Africa Art and Design Development Centre as founded in 1990. Arctic Paper reported that trainees stay a week and return to their villages to teach others. It estimated that more than 50,000 people in Uganda earn an income from beads, and Gateja said more than 50 women work part time from their homes. "I work with 50 women engaged in different activities at a time," he told Africanah.

The gallery's text ties the work to a view of value. For Gateja, it says, Africa's wealth is not only minerals taken from the ground but also climate, language, inherited knowledge and traditional materials, and "value is not only found; it is made through attention, knowledge, and care".

Gateja showed at the Carnegie International in Pittsburgh in 2022, had a solo show at Karma in New York in 2023, and in 2024 represented the Uganda pavilion at the 60th Venice Biennale. The Victoria and Albert Museum in London holds his paper-bead wall hanging "Ripe and Ready" (2022), accession number T.79-2023.

Afriart Gallery is open Monday to Saturday, 10am to 6pm, and on public holidays 10am to 4pm. The gallery's page lists no entry price. It can be reached on +256701630640 or at [email protected].