JOSEPH NTENSIBE
b. 1953, UgandaUgandan artist Joseph Ntensibehas made it his life’s work to lean into his very realconcerns about the diminishing forests of his youth. Born in 1953, the Uganda of hischildhood has changed beyond measure thanks to rampant deforestation due to mining,war, drought, urbanisation andignorance regarding the value of what was once one ofUganda’s most prolific resources. In the past twenty years alone, the equatorial East Africancountry has lost over 1 million hectares of virgin forest cover–almost 30% of the country’stotal land.
While he is a highly collectable artist, it is not easy to procure Ntensibe’s large scalecanvasses and they are regarded as rarities on the contemporary art market. Consequently,an opportunity to collaborate with and showcase this extraordinary piece, from the much-celebrated ‘Disappearing Forest’ series, is a great privilege for Christopher Moller Gallery.
Ntensibe’s dreamlike forest scenes glimmer and shimmer with hidden sources of light; theyare multicoloured sensory feasts that have been likened to Cezanne and Klimt for theirluminosity, but like other devotees, we believe this artist-activist’s work is in a league of itsown. The ever-changing landscape of the series is profound and a devastatingly poignanttimeline of Uganda’s loss. In recent years,critics have noted how for the first-time, glimpsesof sky (unheard of in a true equatorial rain forests) and much more shafts of light have creptin to Ntensibe’s forestscapes; while there is no denying how beautiful the depiction, it islaced with a sense that we are bearing witness to a living tragedy.
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