Arts workers affiliated with Umoja Art Gallery, based in Kampala, Uganda, were denied Swiss entry visas the week before the Africa Basel art fair opened on June 17.
The Art Newspaper reported the news, noting that the gallery’s empty booth featured a sign explaining that the gallery’s “participation remains impossible due to the denial of visas.” The booth is currently devoid of artworks, which are in the process of being shipped to Basel: “An empty booth stands as a reminder that despite the ambition of a global art ecosystem, physical borders and administrative barriers still determine whose voices can be present,” the sign reads.
Africa Basel’s inaugural fair was last year, coinciding with Art Basel’s flagship annual fair in Switzerland. Africa Basel includes 19 international galleries (one more than last year’s) that promote work by African and African diaspora artists.
Umoja Art Gallery was founded in 2011 and represents over two dozen emerging and established artists. Since 2025, the gallery has also supported a residency program. One of the artists whose work Umoja planned to bring to Africa Basel is Makano, a young (born in 2000) Congolese artist based in Kampala. On Umoja’s website, Makano writes about how his work, which addresses corrupt governments and societes, is “born out of depression and frustration.”
John Hillary Balyejusa, who was supposed to travel from Kampala to Basel to represent the gallery, explained to the Art Newspaper that he and his colleagues spent two months trying, unsuccessfully, to secure visas. He speculates that the reason may have to do with the current Ebola outbreak in east and central Africa, even though Congo, and not Uganda, is at the epicenter. (The squad representing Congo in the World Cup had to quarantine for 21 days before being allowed to travel to North America for the tournament.)
The Umoja Gallery sign calls out the disconnect between the idealized global nature of the art world and the realities faced by many trying to participate from less “accessible” locales. “While artistic exchange depends on the movement of people, ideas, and cultures,” the sign notes, “not everyone is granted the same freedom to participate.”
