‘Kibongobongo’ brings cartoons, photography, animation, digital illustration and installation together to reimagine Dar es Salaam
27 August 2026
In ‘Kibongobongo’, everyday art becomes a vivid record of urban life. Bringing together ten artists and one creative institution from Tanzania, Kenya and Portugal, the exhibition moves between humour, political commentary, personal memory and public experience. In conversation with ART AFRICA, curator Simon Sogodi discusses how these varied artistic practices reveal Dar es Salaam’s contradictions, resilience, and creative energy.
Brendon Bell-Roberts: ‘Kibongobongo’ is a nickname for Dar es Salaam with many meanings. How did you decide to use it as a curatorial framework instead of just the exhibition’s title?
Simon Sogodi: Kibongobongo describes Dar es Salaam through the people who experience it every day. The name carries ideas of speed, unpredictability, improvisation, and resourcefulness, which are all part of life in the city. As a curator, I used Kibongobongo to create an exhibition that doesn’t try to offer one definition of Dar es Salaam. Instead, it brings together different experiences of the city, its humour, frustrations, politics, movement, creativity, and contradictions. The exhibition is designed as a space where audiences can recognise things they know, discover things they have overlooked, and see their city from another person’s perspective.
This exhibition features works that are usually seen outside traditional galleries, like editorial cartoons, animation, and digital illustration. What new possibilities do you see when these forms are shown alongside painting and installation?
Bringing these forms into the gallery challenges the traditional boundaries of what is considered contemporary art. Editorial cartoons, animation and digital illustration are already part of everyday life. People encounter them on their phones, on social media, in newspapers and in public spaces. They comment on politics, culture, identity and everyday experiences. The exhibition gives these practices the same attention and seriousness we give to painting and installation. It creates an environment where different forms of visual storytelling can exist together and speak to one another. That is important because contemporary visual culture in Dar es Salaam is much bigger than what happens inside the gallery.
Many of the works focus on everyday urban life instead of rare or dramatic events. What do you think the everyday reveals that bigger, more dramatic stories about the city might miss?
The everyday is the real city experience. Dar es Salaam is often represented through major political, economic, or social stories. But the city is also experienced through daladalas, street vendors, traffic, neighbourhoods, work, fashion, relationships, digital culture and the small negotiations people make every day. I wanted the exhibition to slow down and pay attention to these ordinary experiences. They reveal how people survive, adapt, find humour, build relationships and create their own sense of identity within the city. These are not small stories. They are the stories that make Dar es Salaam what it is.
The exhibition features artists from Tanzania, Kenya, and Portugal. How did you approach balancing local perspectives with international dialogue as you developed the show?
Dar es Salaam is the starting point, and the local experience remains at the centre of the exhibition. The artists from Tanzania bring experiences that are directly connected to the city, while the artists from Kenya and Portugal introduce other ways of looking at urban life. The exhibition does not separate these perspectives into “local” and “international.” It places them in the same space and allows the differences and connections to become visible. The aim is to create a conversation and not a hierarchy. Some experiences are specific to Dar es Salaam; some connect us to other cities: movement, work, identity, public space, inequality, creativity, and the constant process of adapting to change.
Humour appears in the exhibition alongside themes such as uncertainty, resilience, and political commentary. How do you think humour works in today’s art about city life?
Humour is part of how people in Dar es Salaam deal with reality. It can be a coping mechanism, and also a way of questioning power and society. A joke can carry criticism. A cartoon can make an audience laugh and expose something uncomfortable. That is why humour has an important place in Kibongobongo. It allows serious subjects to enter the exhibition without becoming heavy or predictable. The artists and curator use humour to reflect the contradictions of city life where difficult situations, absurd moments and everyday resilience can exist at the same time.
‘Kibongobongo’ suggests that art can document the city in ways that go beyond official stories and news. What kinds of knowledge do you think artists can share that other forms of documentation might miss?
Artists document the parts of the city that statistics and headlines cannot capture. A photograph can preserve a moment. A cartoon can capture a political mood. An illustration can show how a neighbourhood feels. An artwork can hold a personal memory or an experience that may never appear in an official record. Artists also have the freedom to observe closely and ask questions that are not always asked through conventional forms of documentation. Kibongobongo treats these observations as important records of the city. The exhibition becomes a collection of different ways of seeing Dar es Salaam, not an official history, but a human one.
As Visual Arts Manager at Nafasi Art Space and curator of this exhibition, how do you balance supporting each artist’s unique voice with creating a larger curatorial story?
I do not ask the artists to speak with one voice. The strength of this exhibition comes from allowing each artist to bring their own experience, medium, and way of seeing the city. Some artists approach Dar es Salaam through humour and politics, others through identity, memory, photography, digital practice, mixed media or everyday observation. My role as curator is to create the conditions for those different voices to meet. The larger story is not imposed on the artists. It is built through the relationships between their works. When the audience moves through the exhibition, they encounter different versions of the city, and those versions begin to connect.
Thinking beyond the exhibition, what conversations do you hope Kibongobongo will start about the future of contemporary visual culture in Dar es Salaam and the region?
The exhibition challenges us to expand the definition of contemporary visual culture. Dar es Salaam has a growing visual culture that exists across galleries, streets, newspapers, phones, social media, animation, illustration, design, photography, and digital platforms. These practices are already influencing how people understand themselves and their society. The next step is for cultural institutions to recognise and create space for reality. I also want Kibongobongo to strengthen conversations between artists across East Africa and beyond. There is no reason for Dar es Salaam to be the only place where international art is presented. It is a city producing its own visual language, ideas and narratives. The experience of the exhibition should leave audiences with a stronger awareness of their own city: to look at familiar places differently, recognise the creativity happening around them, and understand that everyday life is worthy of being documented, questioned and represented. That is the experience Kibongobongo is designed to create.
This exhibition was on view at Nafasi Art Space from 3 July until 17 August 2026.
