Spirituality: "Wake Up and Live"
Are you living true to yourself? You get rewarded by being you. Adrian Migadde
Adrian Migadde (B. 1989, Uganda) lives and explores deep “Spirituality,” and it sings loudly in his artwork. With simplicity, depth, and power his paintings’ voice is consistent with Bob Marley’s personal, humanist, spiritual side. The voice says: "Wake Up and Live.” Like Bob Marley, Adrian believes “self-realization and freedom are deeply interconnected; self-realization is discovering and embracing one’s true identity, achieving spiritual awakening, and breaking free from mental chains; freedom encompasses physical (and mental) liberation from oppression, spiritual freedom aligned with divine will, and the ability to express oneself authentically.” ChatGPT. Adrian’s striving for spirituality simultaneously creates works deeply personal but with “open to interpretation” meanings, at times disorienting, depending on the viewer’s lens. We explore the duality in Adrian Migadde’s thinking, which manifest in his paintings. Beyond philosophy, his paintings are honest, scholarly, challenging in the use of symbols, metaphors, colors; they evoke feelings and tell his story.
I try to paint in a bipolar way, Adrian says
Adrian’s current artistic direction mirrors living authentically. After mastering the collage technique and style of his mentor Godfried Donkor, he now incorporates collage techniques into his large-scale acrylic works on canvas, charting is own course. The silhouettes in his paintings have the look, feel, and mood reminiscent of clean lines and intrigue achieved by Kara Walker in her cut-paper silhouettes. Also, he uses contrasting elements—light and dark, calm and chaos, joy and despair— to explore the dualities of human experience. Adrian aims to paint in a bi-polar way.
Open to Interpretation – “Blue Series”
The King’s Heart
King’s Heart, Acrylic on Canvas, 200cmx130cm
Adrian’s the “King’s Heart” shows a male figure made of leaves, with a gold leaf over his chest, standing in heart position. The king pensively looks downward at his crown, which sits on a lollipop stick adjacent to a white pool ball to the right of his feet, whereas a black pool ball with a dollar ($) sign falls from his left hand. A cut-paper dark silhouette (“energy”) of a woman wearing a Gomesi dress “dances” in the king’s shadow against a background of a wave of blue lines. The alternating colors, lines of blues, light to dark, dark to light, evoke a nuanced emotional landscape, combining feelings of calm and depth, harmony and tension, and movement and reflection seeking balance, perhaps characteristic of bipolarity, extreme mood swings, ranging from manic (high energy, euphoria) to depressive (low energy, sadness) states. The king figure daintily, perhaps precariously, stands on the edge of a chessboard-like floor.
Is Adrian suggesting life is a game of chance? Perhaps that some were born “king” and some must make themselves King through living purely and resolutely to obtain the spoils of life? Either way, does living a pure resolute life lead to material and spiritual fulfillment?
Polysemy? “Cross Over,” “Amen” and “Salute.”
Adrian continues the series with three mind bending works: “Cross Over,” “Amen” and “Salute.” I call them the “Blues Series,” similar in composition, color and mood. Male, authority figures made of leaves gaze on female silhouette “energy” figures made of water, a clear allusion to oneness with nature; symbolically, eight lines in the background represent “man’s” impermanence, eighty percent made of water. The busy, small tiles on the floor feel disorienting as the viewer interprets the interaction with the naked “spiritual” females interacting with the male, military-police figures.
Cross Over Amen Salute
The female “energy” silhouette figures interact with each central male, military-police figures; in opposition in “Cross Over,” as temptress attracted by and the rewards of masculinity, and using their powers of sexuality in “Amen” and “Salute.” Black creepy death-like hands covet the basketball (Cross Over), the energy woman’s breast (Amen), and traffic officer’s tie, being used illicitly for pleasure, and pushes the female’s back-side away from the face (Salute). The black hands interfere with the desires of the silhouette figures. Is this a scene of “spirituality” or “toxic masculine?”
Cross Over deals with internal conflict, and Amen and Salute present a mind-bending challenge to the standard American/Western interpretation of the image. In each an authority, military figure watches, stand prominently in view, judgement of the temptation, illicit sexual activity. What is the leaf figure doing to the silhouette images? Are the authority figures complicit in the exploitation of women? Are the female images “flipping the switch,” reversing power dynamics? Is it Adrian’s personal struggle or is he making a social commentary on controls, exploitation of personal freedom by the Authority?
Celebrating Life
What the use you live big today, tomorrow you’re buried in casket, Bob Marley
While Adrian Blues Series works are open to interpretation, his search for “spirituality” leads him to chart his own unique course, both in technical mastery and tackling universal questions. Awake to your own spiritual reality; live in alignment with naturalistic principles. Life is transient, so live truly and authentically; death is inevitable. His “Celebrating Life” painting exhorts us to live together with the time earned. Diminutive men contrast to the endowed women in hot read hats, and the mood feels sad in contrast to the energy, movement of the dancers, perhaps reflects painting in a bi-polar way.
Celebrating Life, acrylic on canvas, 180cm x 150cm
The scene spells impermanence, frozen in a moment in time. The dancers made of leaves will decay; water returned to the earth. The white and black balls symbolize a game that exists to be played in harmony and peace to challenge obstacles of living and life.
Paradox & Duality: “Chauvinist-Feminist?”
Rare Beauty Khinde Wiley, Hypebeast
Adrian’s gaze turns to beauty and femininity with a social media twist. His “Rare Beauty” stands akimbo in a striking bold gold dress, right arm akimbo, with vibrant leaves in the background; diminutive onlookers are randomly interspersed. Rare Beauty confidently, assertively smells a rare blue rose. Her right foot gracefully steps out of the gold hashtag frame in an act of defiance. The juxtaposition of the strong, assertive pose with the delicate act of smelling the rose creates a contrast between strength and delicacy, power and gentleness. Adrian is influenced by Kehinde Wiley’s striking poses and vibrant backgrounds in portraits to emphasize strength and beauty in his ("royal”) subjects. Kehinde’s painting “Hyperbeast,” shows the similarity in composition, use of floral patterns, with vibrant harmonious colors. As if to model authenticity Adrian’s “Rare Beauty” leaves are not manicured, what you see in nature, different shapes, larger than life and un-staged, a rejection of stylized images. The leaves show movement, dimension, animated by light. Both Adrian and Kehinde see majesty and royalty in their respective everyday “kings”, people.
Adrian both objectifies and empowers the women. To paraphrase Thuli Mlambo-James, the #hastag pieces celebrate Baganda culture's reverence for female (including his mother) strength while commenting on the challenges women face (in the digital age). Intertwining Baganda cultural elements and addressing how social media distorts and confines the true essence of womanhood.
The women are beautiful to be admired for their qualities yet are literally in a “box.” Adrian gaze does have the women stepping out of the social, historical roles, and out of the #hastag, constrains of social media (life) and its inauthentic presentations. His portrayal of Ugandan women also has a duality, simultaneously chauvinist and feminist (objectification and empowerment), whether intended or subconscious. Maya Angelou would say: “We are all caged birds!”
Living in Joy, Acrylic on Canvas, 200cm x 130cm
The painting could be interpreted as a powerful commentary on identity, agency, and the impact of social media in the modern world. The woman's act of stepping out of the hashtag frame suggests a rejection of simplistic categorizations and an assertion of her autonomy and complexity, challenging both societal expectations and the digital world’s influence on self-perception.
Two joined paintings, Acrylic on canvas, 260cm x 200cm
To live truly, authentically, and with purpose is to "wake up and live.”
Adrian Migadde’s art stands as a testament to the profound interconnectedness between spirituality and authentic self-expression. Rich in symbolism and layered with multiple meaning, his works invite viewers to engage deeply, not only with the art itself, but with their own interpretations and emotions. As Migadde charts his unique course, his art transcends mere visual representation, becoming a medium through which universal questions of existence, identity, and authenticity are asked and perhaps partly answered: To live truly, authentically, and with purpose is to "wake up and live.”