ON NOVELTY AND FAMILIARITY

The photograph above captures me on the ninth floor, the highest level of the de Young Museum in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park, at the Harmon Observation Tower. From this vantage point, one gets a breathtaking view of Golden Gate Park and the San Francisco skyline. Standing there was one of the more memorable and novel moments of my stay in San Francisco. 

It made me appreciate two things. First, the iconic views of the Bay Area stretching out before me. Second, something perhaps even more interesting. how we often visit museums to look at the objects, artworks and collections displayed within them, yet here I was experiencing something entirely different. The museum had offered me a different way of seeing the world, quite literally, and perhaps that is what a museum should also do.

As I reflected on this experience while writing about familiarity and novelty, I was reminded of how my time in San Francisco, as well as my travels across different parts of the world, have repeatedly brought this relationship to life. Each new place, encounter and experience has challenged my understanding of what I thought I knew, while occasionally making me appreciate the familiar in entirely new ways.

Perhaps novelty is not always about encountering something completely unfamiliar. Sometimes, it is simply about being presented with a different perspective on something we have always known. My first few weeks in the Bay Area, two years ago, were filled with novelty. Everything felt fresh and exciting like moving around, meeting new people, discovering new places and finally visiting some of the iconic spots I had spent much of my life watching in movies. The Golden Gate Bridge, the famous Alcatraz Prison, Golden Gate Park, the Cheesecake Factory, to mention but a few. It was almost surreal seeing these places in person after having encountered them for so many years through a screen.

Similarly, during my visit to India in 2019, standing before the magnificent Statue of Unity was an experience I found equally remarkable. I could mention countless other encounters, but these are two that have particularly stayed with me.

There is something about arriving in a new environment that makes you want to see everything. You become curious about almost every street, building, landmark and social space. You want to explore, experience, photograph and somehow, make the most of every moment. In San Francisco, I remember that within my first month alone, my friend Carolina and I had visited almost every place we could think of both within and beyond the Bay Area. Interestingly, I had actually made a list of places I wanted to visit while I was still in Uganda, long before the trip became a reality.

I imagine many of you can relate to this feeling, whether it is travelling to a new country, settling into a different city or simply meeting new people. There is an almost childlike excitement in encountering things for the first time.

But something else has always made me curious: What do the people for whom these places are familiar see when they look at us experiencing them for the first time?

Do they notice our excitement? Do they find amusement in our fascination with things they encounter every day? Or perhaps, seeing our faces light up reminds them of the beauty they have gradually stopped noticing.

I sometimes think that novelty does not only belong to the person discovering something new. It also offer those who are familiar with it an opportunity to rediscover it through someone else's eyes.

There is something fascinating about the things, places and people we have never encountered, and an equally powerful comfort in the things we have known for a long time. The interesting thing is that our relationship with both experiences is subjective, shaped by where we have been, what we have encountered and where we find ourselves in the world at any given moment.

We are constantly navigating between the desire to experience something new and the reassurance of returning to what feels familiar. Perhaps much of what makes us human lies somewhere between these two experiences.

For much of human history, traditional societies were organised around familiarity, predictability and established ways of life. Family traditions, ancestral territories, seasonal weather patterns, wind cycles and shared community practices provided structures through which people understood and navigated their environments. Take hunting, for instance. Those who went out to hunt often relied on familiar routes, established trails and an understanding of how weather patterns influenced animal behaviour. Similarly, domestic responsibilities and other community activities were organised around established routines and shared expectations. These patterns offered a sense of security, continuity and, in many cases, survival.

Stepping outside these established patterns could sometimes be perceived as disruptive, particularly when it challenged collective expectations or threatened the stability of the community. In such settings, predictability was valuable because the unfamiliar often came with risks that communities could not easily anticipate.

Fast forward to our childhoods, and familiarity continued to play a significant role in how we experienced the world. It was found in familiar faces, familiar streets, childhood memories, traditional practices, familiar sounds and the little rituals that quietly became part of our existence. Familiarity gave us reference points. It helped us make sense of the world and provided a sense of continuity in an otherwise unpredictable life.

What we may not have fully appreciated, however, is that novelty had always been part of our development, even from childhood. From an early age, our brains are naturally responsive to new visual and sensory experiences, which contribute to learning and development. During adolescence, changes in the brain's reward systems can make new experiences, social connections, exploration and sensation-seeking particularly appealing. There is an almost instinctive curiosity that encourages us to explore, question, experiment and imagine possibilities beyond what we already understand.

Yet, interestingly, this curiosity does not always translate into a lifelong willingness to embrace the unfamiliar. As we grow older, we sometimes find ourselves retreating into the very familiarity we once seemed so eager to escape.

As we mature, the role and perception of novelty shift considerably. We begin to compartmentalise what is novel and what is familiar based on our circumstances, relationships and individual experiences. We might become hesitant to speak to someone whose experiences differ significantly from ours. We fear dating people who do not give us the butterflies we have grown accustomed to. We hesitate to learn a new skill, enter an unfamiliar social space or encounter an idea that challenges the way we have always perceived the world.

We become increasingly drawn to routine. Novelty disrupts routine, and many of us are uncomfortable with that disruption, even when it reminds us that there is still so much to discover within the lives we think we already know.

I have often wondered whether our relationship with these two experiences is more complicated than we acknowledge.

My year-long stay in the Bay Area offered an interesting illustration of this.

My first few weeks in San Francisco, as I have mentioned, were filled with novelty. Everything felt fresh. The places I had spent years watching in movies, the people I was meeting, the streets I was navigating and the experiences I was collecting all seemed exciting. But gradually, these experiences became familiar.

The excitement of visiting places began to diminish, not necessarily because there was nothing left to discover, but because I was now existing within that environment. I had time to explore new places, but I also had other priorities. Something had shifted. Sometimes, I would simply find myself in my room, looking for something new and novel to do that did not necessarily involve visiting another landmark or exploring another part of the city.

Coming to San Francisco had been achieved. I had experienced the novelty I had anticipated for so long. I was now learning how to navigate my everyday life in the Bay Area.

I knew where to go, how to get around and which places I could visit whenever I had the time. I would tell myself that I could explore somewhere new the following month, but somehow, that month would pass.

The unfamiliar had gradually become familiar.

And perhaps that is one of the interesting things about familiarity: we can become so comfortable with it that we mistake it for permanence. We repeatedly choose what we know, not necessarily because it continues to serve us, but because we understand how to navigate it.

I sometimes think we resist change because the unfamiliar comes with uncertainty. We would rather remain in spaces we have outgrown than venture into territories where we have to introduce ourselves all over again.

Equally, our pursuit of novelty can become an endless search for the next exciting thing, particularly when something we once desired becomes familiar. An environment, an award, a particular group of people, a certain amount of money, a professional milestone or even a relationship. We move from one experience to another, constantly seeking stimulation, sometimes overlooking the richness of what is already around us. In our desire to discover something different, we risk losing the ability to appreciate what has remained.

Yet, something interesting happened during that same period in San Francisco.

Within the four walls of my familiar Bay Area room, I created 22 artworks that became part of my MindScapes Collection, an exhibition I later presented in San Francisco.

Think about that for a moment. While I was occasionally looking outside my room for something new and exciting to experience, something equally remarkable was unfolding within the familiarity of that very space. Perhaps the novelty I was looking for was not always somewhere outside. Sometimes, it was waiting to be discovered within the environment I had become accustomed to.

As an artist, I find this relationship particularly interesting.

Creativity often emerges from the encounter between what we know and what we have yet to discover. We draw from familiar cultural expressions, memories, materials, stories and experiences, while constantly experimenting with new ways of interpreting them.

Sometimes, the most interesting creative discoveries happen when we revisit something familiar with an unfamiliar perspective. A material that has existed for generations, such as barkcloth, can become an entirely new artistic expression. An inherited story can acquire a different meaning when told by another generation. A familiar landscape can reveal something extraordinary when we slow down enough to observe it differently.

This is perhaps one of the beautiful things about art. It allows us to see the familiar differently and makes the unfamiliar feel a little more accessible.

I have also come to appreciate how much of our cultural identity is built around this relationship. Our traditions, indigenous knowledge systems, music, dance, food and storytelling are familiar expressions that connect us to our histories. Yet, every generation encounters them differently. They are not necessarily static inheritances but living experiences that can be reinterpreted, questioned and carried forward in new forms.

There is something important about preserving what is familiar without necessarily resisting what is new. We should be able to honour inherited knowledge while allowing ourselves the freedom to experiment, reinterpret and create new meaning from it.

Perhaps the challenge is not choosing between novelty and familiarity but learning how to make room for both.

We need familiarity to remember where we come from, but we also need novelty to discover where we can go. We need the comfort of things that ground us and the courage to encounter things that challenge us. We need to revisit old places, but sometimes we must allow ourselves to get lost in new ones.

When I eventually returned to Uganda, I became increasingly aware of how much our environments influence the way we see and experience the world. Returning to a familiar environment after spending time away gave me a different appreciation of things I had perhaps stopped noticing. The streets, everyday interactions, cultural expressions, familiar faces and rhythms of life all seemed to invite a different kind of attention.

I found myself drawn to the idea that life does not always require us to abandon the familiar in pursuit of something new. Sometimes, it simply asks us to pay closer attention. To look again. To listen differently. To question what we have always assumed. To find something new in something we have known for years.

Maybe that is where growth happens. Not necessarily in constantly moving away from what we know, but in developing the capacity to experience it differently.

And perhaps, in the end, the art of living is learning when to embrace the unfamiliar, when to return to the familiar and when to recognise that even the things we thought we knew still have something new to teach us.