BIO

Xenson (Samson Ssenkaaba) was born in 1976 in Uganda where he still currently lives and works.

He graduated with first-class honors in painting and Graphic Design from the Margaret Trowell School of Industrial and Fine Arts at Makerere University in 1999.
Xenson is a multi-media artist who interrogates contemporary issues through a synergy of installations, videos, performance, poetry, fashion, and paintings. His work explores the concepts of identity and global circulation of culture against the contextual background of pre and postcolonial history and humanity’s obsessive tendency to hide behind facades, visible or invisible by intentionally creating a perceived aesthetic of flowers, patterning bright colors and masks around his otherwise unsettling subject matter; a phenomenon he calls ‘Obscured Identities’. The resulting visual narrative is a reflection of the complexity of contemporary culture and the preservation of memory.

He also works with used cans and recycled materials in an attempt to clean up his environment and avoid the dystopian futures he portrays through his works. The use of recycled and found materials is his commentary on damping and environmental protection discourse.

His work is widely collected in many private and public collections including the Scottish museum and Minneapolis museum of art.

SELECTED EXHIBITIONS