About

Rocca Holly-Nambi is an internationally award-winning Cultural Producer. Boom. She is Director of b-side, a contemporary arts organisation and biennale festival based on the Isle of Portland. 

Holly-Nambi is undertaking a practice based PhD in Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths, University of London, on Queer Abstraction in Kenya and Uganda. 

This website documents artworks, projects, and ideas. You are welcome to explore.

Image Credit: Darlyne Komukama

Site designed by Romulus Studio

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    • Queer Visual Strategies

    I’m trying to complete a PhD… it’s tricky with a full time job, but it’s also very rewarding, mind bending and eye opening.

    This is the question I’m focusing on: What visual strategies are East African artists adopting in order to survive and thrive in atmospheres of queer oppression?

    Through this exploration I am finding artworks that are queer fabulously disrupting our present – challenging the heteronormative dull thud of existence – as well as presenting the potential for alternative queer futures.

    All of this work aims to:

    • Highlight the work of an incredible group of artists;
    • Celebrate the impact visual culture has on the queer journey;
    • Build strategies for creating alternative spaces and avenues of thought.

    The work will result in an exhibition, staged in the UK and East Africa, and an accompanying thesis highlighting and celebrating both the work of the artists and their poetic and aesthetic queer visual strategies.

    I’m archiving online links and musings here: https://itsyourphd.tumblr.com/

    Because it’s your PhD, not theirs.

    Image: celebrating Ugandan independence day in a bar in North East London, October 2016. (Image my own).