‍ ‍Image: Cowries

Social Play Experience: Angel Mugisha, Money Cowry

Money Cowry is a social play developed by Angel Mugisha around the notions of value, with a political and colonial charge. It invites the public to come together, as an audience, as thinkers and as doers, to use cowrie shells as a medium of exchange much like coin money, and in doing so to restore an understanding of precolonial African currencies before gold and paper created systems of exploitation. 

The work consists of piles of cowrie shells arranged across the floor of Studio Rex in organic mounds, heaped in the corners and distributed through the spaces in between, from corridors to staircase to lobby. Visitors are permitted to take twenty shells from the work, the equivalent of roughly €1.42, which buys a glass of handmade Ugandan mango juice made and served by the artist. 

Date: 21 January 2027
Time: TBA

Amos Rex
Mannerheimintie 22-24
00100 Helsinki

  • Angel Mugisha

    Angel is a Trans Black artist, performer, jewellery and textile maker from Uganda’s Ballroom scene. Growing up in Kamwokya, Uganda, she navigated hybrid identities and developed a largely self-taught practice outside conventional artistic pathways.

    After moving to Helsinki, Angel initially struggled with a sense of belonging. Through the Ballroom community, she discovered the joy of connecting with others who had overcome similar barriers. For her, Ballrooms activate kinship: they create spaces of connection, recognition and collective resilience.

    Her practice explores the relationships between the lives of those affected by racism and violence, the politics of representation, and the transformative power of art in spaces where people like her—and like them—are rarely seen. This approach led to the creation of her first conceptual costume collection, MINERVA.

    In 2024, Angel received a one-year KONE Artist Grant to develop a practice of queering wood, a material historically shaped by cis-white, heteronormative and masculine cultures. From a queer Black drag perspective, she created a series of pendants, brooches and other adornments.

    In 2025, she began Trans-formations, a performance research project supported by the Helander Foundation. The project explores transgender identity and the concept of “normality” through performance.