Acaye Kerunen (b. 1981, Kampala, Uganda) is a multidisciplinary artist and activist whose expansive practice spans installation, performance, storytelling, and poetry. Working with natural materials such as banana fibre, raffia, reeds, and palm leaves—grown, harvested, and dyed in Uganda—Kerunen creates biomorphic installations that are both environmentally rooted and socially charged. Her works dismantle colonial hierarchies between fine art and craft, often incorporating objects made by local women and recontextualising them as monumental assemblages.
Drawing on ancestral techniques passed down through generations, Kerunen’s labour-intensive processes—embroidery, knotting, hand stitching—embody a deep engagement with land, community, and climate. Her art reflects a regenerative ethos and a vision of communal, sustainable futures grounded in African knowledge systems.
Her work was featured in Uganda’s inaugural national pavilion at the 59th Venice Biennale (2022) and has been shown at Afriart Gallery, Kampala (2021) and the Nyege Nyege Festival (2018). ...
