moom bookshop

Nasser Road, Kampala: nicknamed Uganda’s Silicon Valley. This street is a mythical place known for its printing trade and as a centre of fraud. From fake identity cards to university degrees, anything can be made and bought here.

This publication draws attention to one of its main products: posters and calendars portraying politicians and well-known personalities as superheroes. Do not be surprised if you see images of Saddam Hussein, Osama Bin Laden or Mohammed Khaddafi transformed into RoboCops, ready for combat. The artworks are both decorative and political, telling the story of the common man’s struggle against the might of Western imperialism, with international villains celebrated as anti-heroes.

Nasser Road is a collage of works by local designers and prints that Kristof Titeca (BE) collected since he became interested in this peculiar history twenty years ago, about which he has written an extensive analysis. The publication also contains photographs that he and Ugandan photographers Badru Katumba and Zahara Abdul took of this place, and an essay by playwright and essayist Yusuf Serumkuma.

A photographical discovery of a place where everything seems simultaneously unthinkable and real, a place where everything is possible.

Kristof Titeca (BE) is a Professor of International Development at the Institute of Development Policy (IOB) at the University of Antwerp, working on conflict and governance in Central and Eastern Africa. He has published extensively on these issues in both academic and media-outlets. Graduated from the LUCA School of Arts in Gent, he has a keen interest in visual arts. His book Rebel Lives. Photographs from inside the Lord’s Resistance Army (Hannibal Books/FOMU) was exhibited in Antwerp, New York, Geneva and Kinshasa.