Born in Uganda in 1976 and abducted by the Lord’s Resistance Army whilst still a child, Peter Oloya was brutally forced into being a ‘boy soldier’ but managed to escape after being wounded in a bush battle. With his hometown ruined and his family suffering great losses, Oloya remembered the teachings of his grandmother and with great determination used art as a way to educate himself and to heal the emotional wounds such violence creates. Carving curios and working as a DJ to pay first his school and later his university fees, Oloya has set up his own charity to help other boy soldiers and abducted girls through drawing and sculpture.
Working widely across painting and sculpture, Oloya graduated from Makerere University in Fine Art and has since completed numerous commissions and residencies. His sculpture Crane was the gift of the Uganda people to Her Majesty the Queen at the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting in Uganda in 2007. Other prestigious commissions followed such as the ‘African Footballer of the Year’ BBC award trophy.
As one of the rising stars of Ugandan Sculpture, Peter Oloya was awarded the PJLF Pangolin London Sculpture Prize in 2019. The prize has enabled Oloya to work unencumbered on a body of work that explores issues pertinent to the modern African cultural experience. With the decline in traditional cultural activities in Africa, it is the contemporary artist within the continent that articulates the complex and rapidly shifting cultural response to modern issues.