Sudan: Artists in exile
Sudan’s revolution in 2019 ushered in a golden age of art and creativity. Then came the war.
Vincent Ng’ethe in Nairobi
April 2023 was “a normal Ramadan morning” in Ibrahim Mohamed Ibrahim’s apartment on Airport Street in Khartoum. Then the filmmaker’s phone rang. The friend on the other end warned him that something was afoot. He felt a rumbling and heard the squeaking of tyres in the street. Not a normal Ramadan morning at all.
Military vehicles sped through his neighbourhood towards Khartoum’s international airport, which soon became the heart of the fighting. In the days that followed, Ibrahim says, “we were trapped between the army and the RSF [a paramilitary group] and there was no electricity and water”.
Ten and a half months later, he is in Nairobi, nearly 3,000 kilometres from Khartoum.
Like many artists and creatives, Ibrahim and his film company flourished in the few years between the 2019 fall of dictator Omar al-Bashir and the outbreak of war last year. “For the first time, we could film outside our building and the intelligence service building was right in front of us.” They were making Khartoum, a cinematic ode to their home city, when the war interrupted.
In those short, heady years of freedom, they made and released Bougainvillea, a film about women imprisoned in the final days of Bashir’s reign; and Journey to Kenya, which told the story of an unfunded Sudanese jujitsu team that travels in an old van to participate in a tournament in Nairobi.
In Nairobi, Ibrahim who also goes by Snoopy – due to an uncanny resemblance to rapper Snoop Dogg – is part of the Rest Residency, a collective of Sudanese artists and musicians who fled the war in Sudan.
Started by Rahiem Shadad, the programme immerses artists in Nairobi for five and a half months, allowing them time to reflect, work on projects and experience hospitality. In mid-February, it announced the start of its formal programme and named its first 21 participants, who include painters, photographers, musicians, filmmakers, a fashion designer and a novelist.
Started by Rahiem Shadad, the program immerses artists in Nairobi for five and a half months, allowing them time to reflect, work on projects and experience hospitality.
“They’re doing a great job of taking all these creatives under their wing,” Snoopy says. “You feel like you can continue being creative. You’ve already lost home, so you need home far away from home.”
Like Snoopy, all the artists The Continent speaks with admit to underestimating just how vicious the fighting would be. “Since the revolution, Sudan had been very unstable,” Mohammed Almahdi explains. “Every Sudanese thought it would take a week or a month and go back to normal.” When they left, many artists left their work behind. They thought they’d be back soon.
But the war intensified, and it became clear that studios, artwork and equipment would all have to be abandoned. Ibrahim calls the decision to leave his equipment his “biggest mistake”. He’s sure it was all stolen: cameras, computers, lighting, sound. Only their films, which were backed up, survived.
Sannad Shariff was at home in Khartoum’s Kafouri district on 15 April, watching a movie, when the war broke out. A graffiti and mixed materials artist, his art often features eyes that show pain. He had started a programme for young painters called Artist249, the number referring to Sudan’s country code.
He stayed in Khartoum for seven months, venturing out to observe and shoot videos, until one went viral and his friends convinced him to leave. He fled to Port Sudan, passing through Atbara, and then from there to Gedaref, Gondar on the Ethiopian border, Addis Ababa and finally Nairobi. “I lost maybe 100 pieces of my art.” He’s been told that his home was looted. “But they’ve done that to everyone,” he shrugs.
During the revolution, Yasir Algrai was part of a group of artists who painted murals in Khartoum. “Our message was make art, not war,” he says.
At the Circle Art Gallery in Nairobi, where an exhibition of Sudanese art is currently ongoing, Yasir’s portrait shows a woman dressed in a purple thoub. A dove is perched on her arm. “She is waiting for the peace,” says Yasir. So is he.
The exhibit’s curator is the jovial, fast-talking Mahasin Ismail.
Her idea to curate a Sudanese exhibition sprung from frustration. “The only way for me to practise art was to write articles about the war and artists trapped in warzones, whose stories hadn’t been covered enough.”
Since she fled Khartoum, she’s been keeping track of the artistic sites and galleries in Sudan that have been damaged. At least nine active galleries have been robbed, she says. Many artists remain trapped in Sudan.
One artist, called Rasoul, gave her some art as she fled. “He’s still in Khartoum,” she says. “But we’ve lost all contact with him.”