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January 2012
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Art Sudan: Ibrahim Salahi & Mohammad Omar Khalil
Meem Gallery, Dubai
29 February 2012
Meem Gallery, Dubai
29 February 2012
Ibrahim Salahi
Ibrahim Salahi’s art training began at secondary school and continued at Gordon Memorial College, Khartoum. In 1953, the Sudan government sent him to the Slade School at University College London for three years, where he specialised in painting and drawing, with calligraphy as a subsidiary subject.
Returning to Sudan in 1957, Salahi taught for several years at the School of Fine and Applied Art, Khartoum Polytechnic, now Sudan University. UNESCO and Rockefeller Foundation scholarships afforded him the opportunity to work and travel in the US twice in the 1960s. After a short period back in London as assistant cultural attaché at the Sudanese Embassy, in 1972 he became the Sudan
government’s undersecretary for culture and information, a job which landed him in jail as a political prisoner, having been wrongly suspected of anti-government activities. In 1977 he went into voluntary exile in the Gulf State of Qatar, where he worked as an adviser and translator for the government, and in the UK. He now lives and works in Oxford. A major retrospective of his work will be held at the Museum for African Art, New York in 2014.
Mohammad Omar Khalil
Mohammad Omar Khalil was educated in Khartoum, where he studied and taught at the School of Fine and Applied Arts until 1963. He later pursued his studies in fresco painting and printmaking at the Academy of Fine Arts, in Florence. In 1993, he was a resident artist at Darat al Funun in Amman.
Khalil's work comprises paintings, prints, and livres d'artiste. In 1978, he was invited to head the engraving workshop at Asilah’s Cultural Moussem, where he continues to supervise students during the summer festival. His work has been included in numerous exhibitions worldwide, including Perspective on Contemporary Art, Kinda Foundation Collection at the Institut du Monde Arabe, Paris,
2002, and Kunsthalle, Darmstadt, Germany, 2003. Khalil has received several awards, among them First Prize at the International Biennial, Cairo, 1993, and First Prize in Printmaking, National Academy Award, New York, 2003. He has lived and worked in New York since 1967, where he teaches at the Parsons School of Design and the New School University.
Ibrahim Salahi’s art training began at secondary school and continued at Gordon Memorial College, Khartoum. In 1953, the Sudan government sent him to the Slade School at University College London for three years, where he specialised in painting and drawing, with calligraphy as a subsidiary subject.
Returning to Sudan in 1957, Salahi taught for several years at the School of Fine and Applied Art, Khartoum Polytechnic, now Sudan University. UNESCO and Rockefeller Foundation scholarships afforded him the opportunity to work and travel in the US twice in the 1960s. After a short period back in London as assistant cultural attaché at the Sudanese Embassy, in 1972 he became the Sudan
government’s undersecretary for culture and information, a job which landed him in jail as a political prisoner, having been wrongly suspected of anti-government activities. In 1977 he went into voluntary exile in the Gulf State of Qatar, where he worked as an adviser and translator for the government, and in the UK. He now lives and works in Oxford. A major retrospective of his work will be held at the Museum for African Art, New York in 2014.
Mohammad Omar Khalil
Mohammad Omar Khalil was educated in Khartoum, where he studied and taught at the School of Fine and Applied Arts until 1963. He later pursued his studies in fresco painting and printmaking at the Academy of Fine Arts, in Florence. In 1993, he was a resident artist at Darat al Funun in Amman.
Khalil's work comprises paintings, prints, and livres d'artiste. In 1978, he was invited to head the engraving workshop at Asilah’s Cultural Moussem, where he continues to supervise students during the summer festival. His work has been included in numerous exhibitions worldwide, including Perspective on Contemporary Art, Kinda Foundation Collection at the Institut du Monde Arabe, Paris,
2002, and Kunsthalle, Darmstadt, Germany, 2003. Khalil has received several awards, among them First Prize at the International Biennial, Cairo, 1993, and First Prize in Printmaking, National Academy Award, New York, 2003. He has lived and worked in New York since 1967, where he teaches at the Parsons School of Design and the New School University.
Meem Gallery presents the work of Ibrahim Salahi (b. 1930, Omdurman) and Mohammad Omar Khalil (b. 1936, Buri), pioneers of modern art in Sudan and the region. Having studied in Sudan and Europe, both artists through their work have forged a technical link between Western art practices and their cultural heritage. Salahi is renowned for his early experiments with the Arabic letter, exploring its semantic roots and aesthetic qualities in his work. Using art as a way of communicating social and topical issues, Salahi highlights the significance of the artist’s role in greater society. Khalil, who has studied printmaking and fresco painting, creates collage compositions from readymade objects to examine the traditional symbolism of the Arab world, creating a dialogue between his heritage and contemporary techniques. Both artists’ work have been exhibited worldwide and is held in international collections including the British Museum, London; MoMA and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC; and Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha.
Mohammad Omar Khalil. Petra VIII (1986-1997)
Mixed technique. Print: 117 * 237 cm. Image: 101 * 228 cm
Edition 18/20, Triptych
Ibrahim Salahi. In the Present (1987)
Indian ink on Bristol board
64 * 45 cm