It’s been more than 40 days and Sunday never came
Alaa Sherif, Yasmin Abdallah, Galala Yousif, Almogera Abdelbagi, Mohamed Sonata, Hossam Abdelsalam, Abdelmagied Afifi, Mahdiya, Heibat Alfatih, Mozafar Ramadan, Azza Ahmed Abdel Aziz, Katarzyna (Kasia) Grabska, Reem Aljeally
“It’s been more than 40 days, and Sunday never came”
A sentence often recalled and reshared by many Sudanese people who had to, and still are, enduring war, suffering, and displacement after the breakout between 2 armed forces, the Rapid Support Forces of Lt. Gen. Mohammed Hamdan Daglo (also known as Hemedti), and the Sudanese Army under the leadership of gen. Abdel Fatah Al Burhan in Khartoum on April 15th, 2023. A war that is a battle for power between two rival armed forces has forced many to leave or lose their homes, jobs, and, even worse, loved ones.
Before the fighting erupted, INSPIRE researchers Katarzyna (Kasia) Grabska and Azza Ahmed A. Aziz, in partnership with Reem Aljeally from The Muse multi studios in Khartoum, Sudan, organised a five-day workshop with artists in Khartoum. Open Space Khartoum opened on the 13th of April, 2023 and was a result of over two years of ethnographic research (INSPIRE) with artists in the city. Collectively designed and organised, 15 artists, including visual artists, musicians, photographers and filmmakers, together with the two researchers, worked with questions of what inspires their work, what are their central themes of creative practice and their interconnectedness with the political and social context of Sudan.
On the 15th of April, Azza and Kasia were getting ready to leave for the third day of the Open Space. At around 9 am, they heard sporadic shootings, which then transformed into regular gunfire, bombardments and shelling. From the frantic WhatsApp and SMS exchanges, they quickly learned about the attacks at the Sports Centre in Khartoum between the Rapid Support Forces of Hemedti and the Sudanese Army. The two groups were also fighting to gain control over the airport. Azza and Kasia found themselves trapped in the middle of the fighting between the Presidential Palace and the Military Headquarters. The third day of the Open Space had to be put on hold as they communicated with Reem. The group of artists quickly sent messages of fear, disdain, and support over the WhatsApp group that they created in the preparation of the Open Space.
It has now been over a month and a half since the conflict between the two generals erupted and changed the course of the lives of the Sudanese people. As a result, over a thousand people have been killed, over a million and a half people have been displaced internally and across borders, and more than half of the country’s population has been left in need of urgent humanitarian assistance. The civil war raging in Sudan lies on a continuum of violence to which the Sudanese state has subjected its citizens over the long term (Azza Abdel Ahmed Aziz, 2023).
As a result of the escalating violence, many fear that the war will devastate the city’s burgeoning art scene, which has emerged after the 2018 revolution in Khartoum, mainly driven by young artists who were beginning to gain national, regional and global attention after 30 years of dormant cultural scene in Sudan. Some of the fiercest fighting in the capital has unfolded in neighbourhoods like Khartoum 2, where the city’s newest art galleries, including the Muse Gallery of Reem, are based, or bustling districts like Souk al-Arabi. Robberies and looting are rampant in those areas, carried out mostly by the paramilitary forces, gangs that have emerged as a result of chaos and fighting, as well as sporadically by poorer residents who enter houses that were left behind open.
Hundreds of Sudanese artists, curators and musicians have fled their studios and galleries in the capital, jeopardising thousands of artworks and bringing a pause to the emerging art scene. Among those mourning the loss of what we called life are the artists and creatives of Sudan who have been at the forefront of resistance since 2018. And just ironically, two days before this war erupted, when we launched the INSPIRE Open space in the heart of Khartoum, we started discussing how wars and conflict affect art and artists. We woke up on the 15th of April to a living war ourselves.
As the fighting and displacement continued in Sudan, on the 16th of May, 2023, Azza, Kasia and Reem decided to follow up with these artists and over whatsapp asked whether their artistic and creative practice has helped them in the current situation of war and displacement. After making sure everyone and their families are safe, and upon reflecting within the workshop group, the creatives of Khartoum’s Open Space shared their deepest thoughts and expressions of the unsettling situation we found ourselves in, whether it be through a song, a text, an image, or even a flying thought. In this article, we share with you some of the responses from those artists who still have access to the internet and could share their thoughts with us.
Artist and painter Yasmeen Abdullah, who was nine months pregnant when this war started, had to leave for Shendi in Northern Sudan to be able to give birth safely after medical care was hardly possible in Khartoum. Yasmeen says:
“War is a very harsh experience, things change quickly and surprisingly, specifically for the artists who did not leave Sudan. I had to leave my studio, my tools, the reaps of years of artworks, and migrate to a safer city. Art in those times is more important than any previous period, as it documents the events and contributes to shedding light on the Sudanese crisis. As artists, we must have the ability to renew, start over, and search for new tools to express ourselves and the struggle we live in. We may not be able to translate these events directly, but they have certainly become part of our human and artistic being.”
Inspired by a poem by Mahmoud Darwish, translated from Arabic:
And you ask: What is the meaning of the word homeland? They will say: It is the house, the mulberry tree, the chicken coop, the hive of bees, the smell of bread and the first sky.. And you ask: Does one word of three letters accommodate all this and seize to contain us? Home is not land.. but it is the land and the right to it together.. the right with you, the land with them..
While all the way from Eastern Sudan, the city of Sinkat, musician and composer Hossam Abdalsalam shares this music piece as an expression of love for his homeland. He played it in April on the outskirts of Port Sudan:
“I am Sudanese, everywhere in Sudan is a homeland of which we are proud and which we adore. We sing of its beauty, and without it, we perceive none, if we desert it, we leave our hearts within it, dwelling in its expanses.”
Singer and writer Mahadiya who found refuge in Medani in Sudan uses her voice as well to communicate some of her scattered thoughts while she is trying to make sense of what has happened:
“Hope is the last thing that dies.” Mohamed Sonata, musician and music teacher who fled to Kassala and is now in Port-Sudan, Eastern Sudan as he tries to join his brother in the United Arab Emirates.
Artist and activist Abdelmagied Affifi who had to flee to the city of Kosti in White Nile state, gathers displaced children around him as he tells them stories, teaches them how to sculpt with local mud, and how to draw.
Mozafar adds:
“This position of war, makes the artist’s political attitude towards the work of art and towards his audience a moral necessity as a matter of social responsibility, because he stands in the first line of the civil front as a defender who uses a peaceful weapon and at the same time an honest documenter of the historical moment.”
A theatre professional, stage designer and poet, Heibat Alfatih wrote this poem to reflect her creative process and in an attempt to spread hope and a call to hold on to the light at the end of the tunnel as she expresses.
Translated from Arabic:
Among the destruction
Behind the wreckage
I hear a cheer
And roar for life
A hum for peace
The clapping of girls
A Zaghroura (a sound made by women in expression of joy) of hope
And the cooing of the pigeons
A Kambla dance (A traditional Sudanese dance from the West)
Songs and good news.. among the flames
Alaa Sherif, now based in Kosti, composed a song at the very beginning of the fighting and shared it on the WhatsApp group: “ Relentlessly we will fight”
