Martha Kazungu

Martha Kazungu (b. 1993) is an Ugandan curator and art historian. She holds a Master of Arts degree in African Visual and Verbal Art with a focus on curating and media in Africa from the University of Bayreuth in Germany. She is an alumnus of the Makerere University, TheMuseumsLab, Independent Curators International (ICI), Àsìkò School, C& and AtWork.

Currently, Martha serves as Founding Director of Njabala Foundation, a not-for-profit organization promoting visibility for women artists through exhibitions, research, mentorship, and community engagement. At Njabala Foundation, she organizes three thematic annual exhibitions as well as embarked on a research project on African women artists from the 1960s.

As a researcher on African Art History and the Formation of a Modern Aesthetic, she engaged with and researched on the African art collections in the World Culture Museum in Frankfurt and the Iwalewahaus in Bayreuth, Germany. She coordinated Art History Re-written: Contributing to the History of Post-colonial Modernism symposium at the Uganda national museum.

As an Assistant Curator at the MARKK Museum in Hamburg, Martha engaged the institution’s African collection. Notably, she co-curated the Archive of Experiences exhibition, as part of the 8th Triennial of photography in Hamburg, featuring works from the institution's photographic collection as well as the work of Ghanaian artist Kelvin Haizel. The exhibition was accompanied by a catalog that she co-edited.

Martha recently worked with the Kulturstiftung des Bundes (Federal German Cultural Foundation) as a co-curator of the TURN2 Labs in Nairobi, Dakar and Tunis each consisting of 30 experts from the cultural scenes in Africa and Europe. She co-edited the publication on the Labs which was published in 2024.

Other roles include serving on the scholarly advisory committee for the Empowerment exhibition at the KunstMuseum Wolfsburg and on the selection committee for the Henrike Grohs Art Award. She has contributed to several publications in Africa, Europe and the USA.

Martha Kazungu, Founding Director, Njabala Foundation, Nairobi, Kenya, has been awarded by Mercedes Vilardell, London/Mallorca.