Since 2017, Immy Mali has been writing letters to her younger self for her ongoing series Letters to My Childhood. By doing so, she is trying to unpack memory; to “find the truth in fictions that memory can be.” The letters are all addressed to Marcue, the name she still bears with her family, and make up a very private and personal space while exploring the socio-political and economic environment of the Uganda the artist grew up in and continues to live in.
“I have learnt to listen more and so everything is much louder, denser, I can even hear the sound of electricity running through my cables at the desk. That’s possibly an exaggeration but you know what I mean. These drawings are starting to look like you.”
Anderu Immaculate Mali a.k.a Immy Mali
Immy from Arua, lives and works in Kampala Uganda. Using a variety of media including, text, video, sound, sculpture, installation, animation, her work attempts to unpack the complexities and entanglements of memory and existence in a neo/postcolonial Uganda. Notions of presence and absence, personal memories of childhood growing up in Uganda juxtaposed with current personal and collective experiences of existence in shifting spaces also influence her work. Her ongoing project Letters to my childhood (2017-present) accords her the duality to engage with her past and present simultaneously. In 2013, she obtained a Bachelor's degree in Industrial and Fine Arts from Margaret Trowell School of Industrial and Fine Arts (Makerere University, Kampala). She is an alumnus of the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten 2018-2019 (Amsterdam, Netherlands). Mali has participated in exhibitions, residencies and workshops in various countries including Kenya, The Netherlands, India, Ethiopia, Denmark, Germany, USA, South Africa, Mozambique, Angola, and Uganda. Her work has been published in art magazines including the Africa Arts Journal 2019.