Peter Oloya

Peter Oloya was born in war-torn Northern Uganda and abducted from his family aged eleven by the Lords Resistance Army. He was brutally forced into being a ‘boy soldier’ but managed to escape after being wounded in a bush battle. He chose 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 now set up his own charity to help other boy soldiers and abducted girls to heal themselves through drawing and sculpture. Working widely across painting and sculpture, Oloya graduated from Makerere University. He has completed numerous commissions and residencies and 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.

Dedicated to sculpture, Oloya will be working on a sculptural project with Pangolin London through 2010 with an exhibition planned for 2011.