Swiss Visa Denials Leave Umoja Art Gallery’s Africa Basel Booth Empty
A booth without artworks became the most visible statement at Africa Basel this week. Umoja Art Gallery, based in Kampala, Uganda, said its participation was derailed after arts workers affiliated with the gallery were denied Swiss entry visas in the days before the fair opened on June 17 in Basel.
The gallery’s stand was left bare while the works were still in transit. A sign placed in the booth explained that participation remained impossible because of the visa refusals, turning the empty space into an unintended commentary on the art world’s uneven access to mobility. The message was blunt: even in a globalized fair system, borders and paperwork still decide who gets to show up.
Umoja, founded in 2011, represents more than two dozen emerging and established artists and has also run a residency program since 2025. Among the artists it had planned to present was Makano, a Congolese artist born in 2000 who is based in Kampala. On the gallery’s website, Makano describes work shaped by corruption, depression, and frustration.
John Hillary Balyejusa, who was expected to travel from Kampala to Basel on the gallery’s behalf, said the team spent two months trying to secure visas without success. He suggested the refusal may have been linked to the Ebola outbreak in east and central Africa, though Congo, not Uganda, is at the center of the current crisis.
The episode lands at a moment when Africa Basel is trying to expand its platform. The fair’s inaugural edition took place last year alongside Art Basel’s flagship Swiss event, and this year it brought together 19 international galleries, one more than in 2025, all focused on artists from Africa and the African diaspora.
For Umoja, the empty booth became more than a logistical setback. It exposed a familiar contradiction in the contemporary art world: the rhetoric of international exchange often depends on the very movement that remains easiest for some participants, and hardest for others.
