Kasagga Jude

Jude Kasagga is trained as a painter, illustrator and sculptor although he is better known a painter at the moment. Kasagga has risen from oblivion only a few years ago to become one of the most recognizable brands on Uganda’s visual arts scene. His peculiar style of painting that has been associated with the Surrealist movement has stamped his signature as a painter with a penchant for depicting subjects in the otherworld.

Jude Kasagga joined Kyambogo University in Uganda to pursue a two-year Diploma in Education specializing in Art and Design. Upon graduating as an art teacher, he was hired by Kimanya Secondary School in the southern district of Masaka as an art tutor but continued painting during his spare time. He developed an early ambition to practice art and by so doing he began to produce his first paintings which he would send to Nommo gallery, Uganda’s only national art gallery, to participate in annual group exhibitions.

It was at this time that he joined the Njovu art collective, a group of young artists that premiered in the opening show at Mish Mash, a British owned exhibition space located in Kampala’s leafy suburb of Kololo. The proprietor of the gallery once tipped him as the best-selling artist of the time.

Kasagga produces works with features from the otherworld; figures with elongated necks and over sized limbs – a life that is beyond the conventional perception of reality. Such features are only perceptible in the dream world.