Image source, Steve Russell Studios
Peter Oloya at work in 2019
The joy that former child soldier Peter Oloya finds in sculpting was first sparked while foraging for clay with his grandmother in northern Uganda – a region made famous by terrifying raids led by the Lord's Resistance Army rebel group.
“My grandmother showed me where the clay was, what kind of clay to use and why,” says the Ugandan artist, who grew up in Limu Bungulewicz village in Kitgum District.
It was the early 1980s before much of the population was rounded up in camps to save them from attacks and kidnapping.
Oloya and his late grandmother, Helen Ato Okola, would often follow the grazing cows as they headed towards the wet spots under the groves of some large trees.
There was a special clay called “Bono” in the Acholi language in Oloya. Cows loved it for its minerals, and Oloya's grandmother loved it because it was perfect for the pots she made for cooking and storing water.
Young Oloya was fascinated and inspired by how his grandmother's hands turned clay into beautiful vessels.
He was particularly fascinated by the designs she made on the pots using small tools. “It was only much later when I turned to art as a career that I realized how artistic it was,” he says.
Oloya is now one of Uganda's most famous sculptors, and a leading sculpture gallery in London is hosting an exhibition of his work this month.
Image source, Getty Images
Many LRA fighters were kidnapped as children in the ranks of the rebel group
The artist is best known for his work “Crowned Crane,” a bronze statue of the national bird and a 2007 gift from Uganda to the late British monarch, Queen Elizabeth II.
He is also known among African football fans for having won the BBC African Footballer of the Year award, for a decade from 2009.
Oloya paints and works mostly in bronze, marble and wood, but his artistic roots lie in the clay he and his grandmother collected from riverbeds in a valley near his village home.
“Pottery is very sculptural, and clay has been a part of me since childhood,” Oloya tells the BBC.
When Oloya was a child, he was sometimes ridiculed for making pottery with his grandmother – because his Acheulian culture saw it as a profession for girls and women.
But Oloya couldn't resist walking near an ant dune without scooping up some fresh, soft clay and making a ball for a slingshot or something.
“Whenever I see it, I intuitively pick up the clay and try to make something out of it – for fun and entertainment,” he says.
His first sculpture came from his other passion – listening to the radio. His father, a police officer based in the capital, Kampala, had sent one of them to his home. It had lights that changed from green to yellow to red depending on size.
“I loved it so much, that when I was a kid, I used to wonder how few people got there to speak,” Oloya says.
He fashioned a radio out of clay, drilling small holes for indicator lights. He filled them with fireflies that glowed in the dark.
Image source, Steve Russell Studios
Oloya incorporated old cell phones into this traditional bridal mask
But his childhood was marred by years of conflict in northern Uganda, where government forces battled Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) fighters, who were notorious for murdering, raping and kidnapping children to become fighters or sex slaves.
Like hundreds of thousands of people, Oluya was forced out of his home and into an internally displaced camp set up by the government.
Then, when he was 11, he was kidnapped by the Lord's Resistance Army when his family ventured back into their garden to harvest sesame seeds into a nutritious paste because there were not enough food rations in the camp.
He was beaten, separated from his mother, and taken with other captive children deep into the jungle.
They continued to move to avoid government forces, and the rebels forced their captives to become boy soldiers.
During that time, Oloya turned to his favorite clay as a remedy to alleviate the horrors he was facing – something he still finds difficult to talk about.
He was extracting clumps of clay from the numerous termite mounds that littered the jungle where he was being held captive.
“I suddenly realized that I was making art, even out there in the bush,” he says.
For months, he believed his mother was dead until a new kidnapper told him she was alive – at which point he decided he needed to escape.
Oloya managed to escape after 18 months. Art became his refuge.
In 2004, he graduated from Makerere School of Fine Arts – where he worked his way up by DJing at night and selling toys he had been making since he was a child.
Olya believes in the power of art to change people's lives.
After graduating from art school, he returned to internally displaced person camps in northern Uganda to give art lessons and nurture talent as well as hold exhibitions in Kampala.
Profits from all sales of artwork were shared.
The camps have now been closed and people in northern Uganda have been able to return to their homes. But his community organization is still working – and he is creating a museum of Acholi art and culture in his village.
A rift is a piece of bronze made from the impact of cracked earth. Unless you look carefully, you might miss the small human figure that has fallen into one of the cracks – or fault lines.
Oloya's message is frank and frank: “Climate change, global warming – it's our fault and it's killing us.”
Image source, Steve Russell Studios
This bronze work, the fissure, gives the impression of cracked earth
The accompanying piece is a bronze sculpture of a crying child. It provides more hope – because the child is also holding a green sapling with one hand.
“We have to stop thinking of the planet as Mother Earth, who exists only to provide for our needs,” Oloya says.
“Instead, we should think of the planet as a sad child, asking to be held, asking for our help.”
Another striking piece – which differs from his usual works – is the traditional women's dress that Oloya made from bark cloth. Attaches to the bodice of old mobile phone keyboards.
Oloya uses them as symbols of modernity and plastic waste from outside Africa, which contrasts sharply with the organic bark fabric that comes from within the continent.
“Most of our environment in Africa is not made in Africa,” says the artist. “It was brought and is rotting in Africa.”
“But I put dead phones on the dress to give people hope – we can recycle things, we can reuse things.”
Oloya also explores the theme of modernity in a series of different sizes and shapes of cucurbits, the woody fruit of calabash trees.
African decorative patterns have been burned onto the surface of the gourd.
At first glance they look like gourds used in many villages to store milk, oil or water. But upon closer inspection, you can also see the logos of the global giants that now dominate the beverage market in most African countries.
“I love art because it gives me another language — to spark conversations,” Oloya says.
Image source, Steve Russell Studios
My Planet My Second Child, 2023 – Bronze sculpture by Peter Oloya
The exhibition Peter Oloya: Journey from Adversity to Art is on display at Pangolin London, Kings Cross, until 2 March 2024.
Penny Dale is a freelance journalist, podcaster, and documentary filmmaker based in London.
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