Works made rare by the war escaped the devastation of Sudan’s capital, where some left the day before the fighting began, and are in Lisbon in an exhibition prepared more than a year ago.
Then came the destruction, “the corpses in the streets, the mad looting and vandalism, the dangers and the lack of food, the lack of functioning hospitals, the lack of supplies of all kinds, the collapse of the banking system,” said Rahiem Shadad, a Sudanese and one of the exhibition’s curators, based on reports he receives from Khartoum.
The three dozen works, by nine Sudanese artists, are in some cases the few that remain of the work they developed in recent years, Shadad and António Pinto Ribeiro, the other curator of the “Disturbance in the Nile” exhibition, revealed in statements to the Lusa agency.
Rahiem Shadad, owner of a nearby gallery that brought together most of them and of Khartoum’s artists’ “studios,” left Sudan with his family at the end of March for what he thought would be a two-week vacation in Egypt. , but war broke out and they could not return and remained in Cairo until now.
Close to the Presidential Palace and not far from the airport, this neighborhood was one of the first to be the target of attacks fought since April 15 by the militias of the Rapid Intervention Forces (RSF). , in its acronym in English) Sudanese Army.
“Since then, these artists, gallery owners and all those who work in the art scene have been denied access to that area,” he explained, adding that on April 24 he had information that a building next to the gallery was on fire and later received a report, “in mid-May, stating that there is not a single safe house” in that part of town, “that everything has been destroyed or looted, vandalized.”
“It’s hard to imagine. It’s very bad,” he said, emphasizing that it wasn’t the war he thought he was going to talk about when his Downtown Gallery and Brotéria, in Lisbon, where the exhibition runs until July 28, began to open. prepare it, almost a year and a half ago.
It turned out to be fortunate, as many of the works that exist are the few left behind by the nine artists, who have meanwhile fled to Egypt, Spain or regions of Sudan further from the combat zones.
“The last works came out on the eve of the beginning of the fighting. If it was a day later, it would not happen,” said António Pinto Ribeiro, highlighting the “extraordinary” phase of artistic production in an interview with Lusa. in Khartoum.
The works are by artists of three generations, aged 20 to 70, and are considered to be witnesses of a phase of great change in Sudan’s modern history, Pinto Ribeiro also explained, emphasizing that this is what this exhibition want to show the world. : “a reference work”.
“We didn’t intend to talk about the war,” the Sudanese gallery owner also insisted, describing that the name given to the exhibition is because the goal was and remains to “give people a story about how expression in Sudan”. her history is portrayed in a “very contemporary” way in these canvases.
“The art scene in Sudan was booming. It grew exponentially”, with “three galleries opened last year. Temporary exhibitions could be visited all over the country” and the artists who managed to escape the war are now numerous. able to return to production, Raheem Shadad said.
“This exhibition may seem something exotic, but in fact it is not”, it is a rich artistic production that, although not exactly unknown in Europe, has a number of peculiarities that prevented its spread, hence the state of conflict for decades, highlighted Pinto. Ribeiro.
After Lisbon, these paintings that have escaped the war in Sudan will be in Berlin in November and for now it is planned that they will also go through Madrid and Paris.
Source: DN
