By BAMUTURAKI MUSINGUZI

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Misplaced violence best describes Canon Griffin Rumanzi’s photography exhibition under way at Goethe-Zentrum, Ugandan German Cultural Society, and Alliance Francaise in Kampala.

Aphotograph of the presidential candidate Yoweri Museveni pasted over that of his political rival Robert Kyagulanyi Ssentamu aka Bobi Wine with half of Museveni’s face with the eyes, one ear and his signature big hat, while for Bobi Wine it is his one ear, mouth and chin — resulting from the vandalisation of the two posters.

“I found it that way on Kampala Road opposite Fido Dido. Different faces, same life force. On the surface, it's one campaign poster vandalised to reveal what had been pasted over,” Rumanzi said.

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“You see the tragi-comedy there? One team goes around pasting one candidate’s pictures, another team comes pasting the opponent’s pictures over them, then another comes tearing those off… That picture was just an awesome manifestation. You can’t make that up.”

The exhibition offers a commentary on democracy and the display and destruction of election posters that litter urban centres during the election cycles.

On display are photographs of complete election posters, but the most interesting are torn out, defaced, and pasted over by other public messages. They tell the story of the dislike of politics and politicians, lack of civility, intolerance and destructive nature of Ugandans of public artworks and spaces.

These photographs are of the posters as found by Rumanzi since 2016. Armed with his camera he captured the posters on mainly on electricity poles and other public spaces.

The exhibition titled “#PoliticianEyes (Let ME Help you Lead you)” aims at an artistic stimulation of active citizenship.

“The expression of careless violence, dread, and misanthropy is not all we stand for. There are places where people attempt to conserve and maintain. We are plagued by our economic status and the quality of our human resource but that’s not all.”

The exhibition opened on September 21, and will close on October 21.

He has an explanation for the posters: some are complete while others have all manner of defacing.

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“The expression of careless violence, dread, and misanthropy is not all we stand for as the Ugandan electorate. There are places where people attempt to conserve and maintain. We are plagued by our economic status and the quality of our human resource but that’s not all.”

Rumanzi credits a 1983 book, Videodrome, for the idea of the photographs. One of the lead characters speaks of how something that has theory and philosophy behind it is hard to defeat.

“So is how the phenomena around these election posters that I photograph say more than they simply appear. Let’s call it artistic research," he said.