Irene Piloya

Born 1993 in Gulu/Uganda.

Irene Piloya is an artist and art educator working between Kumasi/Ghana, and Gulu. Her practice encompasses sculpture, painting, and film, through which she explores personal experiences of displacement, memory, and history in relation to place, identity, and belonging. She holds a Postgraduate Diploma in Art Education from Kyambogo University, Uganda (2019), a BA in Industrial Fine Art and Design from Uganda Christian University, Mukono/Uganda (2016), and an  MA in Painting and Sculpture from Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi (2023). Piloya currently teaches at St. Mary’s College Lugazi, a private secondary school in Buikwe/Uganda, while maintaining an active art practice.

Piloya participated in documenta 15 as part of the blaxTARLINES collective in collaboration with Gudskul collective, Kassel/Germany. She was also involved in the GASTHOFF 2022 residency in Frankfurt, working with Staedelschule and international artists. She is a member of UNDER GROUND Contemporary Art Space in Kampala/Uganda, an artist-run platform founded by curator Nantume Violet, which facilitates international art exchange programs such as Travel Somewhere Nice, through which Piloya engaged in an exchange residency in Ghana. In 2018, her paintings featured in a collective exhibition with Okuki-women rising, reflecting on gender struggles and successes.

Piloya’s solo exhibitions include Metaphor(s) (2023), presented at the Department of Painting and Sculpture, KNUST, and Reconstruction of Memory, Fumesua, Kumasi. The exhibition, curated by the artist, examined impermanence in art and chemical reactions as image-making processes, using Kyenkyen and Lubugo bark cloth. It explored themes of home’s fluidity and neuroplasticity’s role in shaping memory and sense of place. Another solo exhibition, There is Hope in the Tears of Separation (2022), took place in her hometown of Gulu, curated by Sascia Bailer (Germany) and Nantume Violet (Uganda). The exhibition focused on bark as a metaphorical material linking Piloya’s family history of displacement and disconnection across three generations.

In 2021, Piloya collaborated with the US-based organization CAI as an art consultant supporting girls’ empowerment worldwide. She was awarded the KAAD Scholarship for her Master’s studies in sculpture in Kumasi. Most recently, in November 2023, she participated in the group exhibition Silent Invasions: The Art of Material Hacking, organized by UNDERGROUND Contemporary Art Kampala alongside Vodo Art Society and Lab, Weaver Bird Residency, and Amasaka Gallery, Uganda.