Margaret Nagawa

Margaret Nagawa is a PhD candidate in Art History at Emory University. Nagawa examines representations of the human body at the intersection of sculpture and language between Uganda’s independence in 1962 and 2022. By focusing on four Ugandan artists: Francis Nnaggenda, Xenson Znja, Immy Mali, and Leilah Babirye, Nagawa analyzes the implications of their interdisciplinary work for cultural liberation.

Her scholarship draws on a range of sources, from archival research and oral histories to object-based study to account for change and continuity across decades of sculpture’s dialogue with other arts, particularly poetry in its oral, written, and performed forms. In a recently curated traveling exhibition and book, Insistent Presence: Contemporary African Art from the Chazen Collection (Chazen Museum of Art, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2023), Nagawa traces representations of the body in works exploring themes of power and belonging through the presence or absence of the human form. Insistent Presence will travel to the Michael C. Carlos Museum at Emory University for the fall 2025 semester. Nagawa holds a Master’s degree in Curating from Goldsmiths, University of London, UK, and a BA with First Class Honors in Fine Arts from the Margaret Trowell School of Fine Arts, Makerere University.