Zarina Bhimji

Zarina Bhimji is an artist whose work is close to my heart. My heart, my family's heart and the hearts of possibly 80,000 other asians who were expelled from Uganda in the latter part of 1972. Idi Amin, the infamous military dictator decreed in the August of that year that all asians should leave the country and hand back all their assets to the Ugandan people after a military coup earlier that year. Amin was the peoples ruler and wanted to correct what he saw as the inequalities of colonial legacy that did the Ugandan people out of what was rightlfully theirs. Of course it is claimed that he asserted his ideas at the expense of thousands of lives, through a rule of terror and tyranny.


My family's presence in this country is as a result of this history. I was 3 years old when we came here. September 27th 1972. All I have are some memories from past recollections, old photographs and family discussion. I can only imagine our life in Uganda through these stories and domestic reminders of how life was before we came to the UK.

copyright Zarina Bhimji, 'Bapa Closed His Heart, It Was Over', 2006, from the series 'Love'

Some of Bhimji's photographs and video work offer an insight into this past. She might not like that though. I went to hear her account of her work today. Although it is a starting point for a sensory and very personal experience of asian life, migration and colonialism, she positions it outside of testimony and documentary. She doesn't want to present the facts of what happened. After all, what are facts? - just an account of a truth. She also maintains that she wants the work to be open-ended and doesnt want to offer an interpretation. I get this. But its difficult for me and maybe other ex-Ugandans to not be immersed emotionally and factually into her imagery based on their own experience. I look at her work and I feel a sense of what I cant remember.

Zarina Bhimji's exhibition is on at the Whitechapel Gallery until 9th March 2012.