Between Body and World
Masterclass with Robert Ssempijja
About the class
This session is part conversation, part presentation offering a unique opportunity to explore the dynamic interplay between art, personal experience, and community impact. Artist Ssempijja Robert takes you on a thoughtful journey, where his work rooted in identity, transformation, and cultural reclamation serves as a lens to examine these connections. Through storytelling, reflection, and shared dialogue, Ssempijja will guide participants through the themes, histories, and personal philosophies that shape his practise, drawing from the echoes of post-colonial narratives and the physicality of the body in motion.
Far from providing definitive answers, this gathering creates a collaborative space to ponder the artist’s role in society:
What does it mean to carry memory in the body?
How do space, silence, and history live in our creative choices?
What questions guide the work, even before it becomes performance?
Underlying those questions are philosophies that define his art: the universal thread of pain, the reclamation of colonial legacies, woven into narratives of resilience and the power of collaboration, reflected in shared creative spaces.
Between Body and World is not just a presentation it’s an act of collective reflection on what it means to create, to question, and to belong. Ssempijja will unveil his creative process a curiosity driven framework that fuels his practice.
About Robert
Ssempijja Robert is a Ugandan contemporary artist, dancer, and researcher. He is building a career in both formal and informal contexts. His practice weaves together movement, critical theory, and experimental forms. Showcasing work in both traditional and non-traditional spaces, Ssempijja’s practice is shaped by the post-colonial era and the ongoing process of decolonization. It reflects his commitment to challenging conventional norms and embracing diverse perspectives, as he seeks to forge a regenerative art practice that transcends exploitative histories and connects Uganda’s distorted past with its digital present.
His work often begins with a "pathological" curiosity unpacking the inherited structures, belief systems, and contradictions that shape Ugandan society today. Ssempijja’s work includes research projects that take the form of texts, dance films, installations, and performances, He seeks to cultivate "a regenerative art practice" that transcends exploitative relationships, connecting the distorted past with the digital present. He is particularly interested in experimenting with new methods of knowledge creation and exploring innovative ways to organize information and develop creative structures.
Website: www.robertssempijja.com