A new exhibition at the Rwanda Art Museum is giving people with lived experience of the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi a direct role in deciding how their memories are presented, placing personal testimony alongside research, photography and contemporary art. Dubbed ‘What the Ground Remembers / Ibyo Ubutaka Bwibuka,’ the exhibition opened on September 22 and runs through January 20, 2027, bringing together six participants whose memories are tied to ordinary places across Rwanda. ALSO READ: Through art, East African artists explore memory, identity and inheritance Rather than treating them only as sources for a museum project, the exhibition asks them to photograph those places, share their own words and recordings, and help shape the stories attached to them. The project grew from collaborative research involving Prof. Caesar Atuire of the University of Oxford and colleagues at the University of Rwanda, including Dr. Innocent Rugaragu and Dr. Liberata Gahongayire. Atuire and Dr. Natalie Tegama are part of a wider research team behind the exhibition. ALSO READ: Rwanda’s philosophy of heroism and the resurgence of praise poetry The collaboration was highlighted at the exhibition's opening by Parfait Ishungure, the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Youth and Arts, who described the research partnership between the two universities as important to the project's approach to storytelling and history. Ishungure said the exhibition demonstrates how a museum can become a space for greater public participation by allowing people whose lives are being interpreted to have a say in how those experiences are presented. That approach is visible throughout the exhibition. ALSO READ: How do we archive the present before it disappears? The six participants, Pierre Ndungutse, Isaac Hakizimana, Chantal Murekatete, Belise Umutoni, Claudine Dusenge and Hussein Rongomongo, took researchers to places that carry personal meaning for them. Those locations are not necessarily memorial sites. They include compounds, paths, market corners and other everyday spaces that have acquired significance through what happened there. Participants photographed those places as they look today. The images are displayed alongside older photographs of the same locations, allowing visitors to see how the physical landscape has changed over time while considering what memories have remained. Those photographs and the participants' words also became the basis for painted portraits created with multimedia artist Timothy Wandulu. The exhibition also includes new works by artists Benjamin Rusagara and Bless Aine Hirwa, while selected works from the Rwanda Art Museum's permanent collection are placed alongside the new pieces. At the center of the exhibition is a listening space where visitors can hear recordings from the participants in their own voices. The organisers say the recordings have been left without outside interpretation so that visitors encounter the testimonies directly. One of the recorded voices is Rongomongo, who has publicly acknowledged his role in the killings of 1994. According to the exhibition brief, his testimony was included after discussions with survivors involved in the project, who considered acknowledgment of harm an important part of Rwanda's experience with Gacaca and community reconciliation. His account is presented alongside, rather than against, the experiences of survivors. The exhibition forms part of TheMuseumsLab, a platform focused on joint learning and professional exchange around the future of museums in Africa and Europe. Museum professionals and experts from different institutions were in Kigali for a week of exchanges connected to the programme. Ishungure said the exhibition also points to a wider question about who holds authority inside museums. He argued that display involves interpretation, and that allowing participants to act as artists and curators of their own memories changes the relationship between cultural institutions and the communities they serve. For the organisers, the method leaves room for different forms of remembrance to exist together. Rwanda's annual Kwibuka commemoration provides a national framework for remembering the genocide, while the exhibition focuses on quieter memories attached to particular people and places. The project was organised through the Rwanda Art Museum and the Rwanda Cultural Heritage Academy in collaboration with the Ministry of Youth and Arts, TheMuseumsLab, ANTITHESIS, a research platform at the University of Oxford, and Culture&. Dr. Natalie Tegama and Vivaldi Ngenzi curated the exhibition, while Nelson Niyakire served as coordinator. ‘What the Ground Remembers’ is open daily from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the Rwanda Art Museum, Kanombe.
