Kamala Ibrahim Ishaq

Kamala Ibrahim Ishaq (born 1939) is a Sudanese artist who studied at the College of Fine Arts Sudan University of Science and Technology (SUST) (formerly known as the high department of Arts in Khartoum Technical Institute), KTI, in Khartoum, Sudan (1963). She pursued her postgraduate at the Royal College of Art in London (1964–1966) and was a founder of a conceptual art group called the "Crystalists" which challenged the traditional practices in the Sudanese art scene.[1][2] She founded the group with Muhammad Hamid Shaddad and Nayla El Tayib and its intention is to challenge the Khartoum Group and its traditional male outlook.[3] She has been called the first modern woman painter in the Sudan.[4]

She studied at the Khartoum Technical Institute from 1959 to 1963, before studying painting, illustration and lithography at the Royal College of Art, then returning to teach at the Khartoum Technical Institute.[5]

Influences and contributions

Unique to Kamala was the spiritual influence she attained from the works of William Blake and the aforementioned Zar. These themes of existentialism as well as expressions of feminism would serve as the central themes of Ishaaq's work in the 1970s and 1980s. It would be these influences that distinguished Ishaaq from her compatriots inspired largely by Sudanese independence and Islamic themes. If Blake and Zar provided inspiration, it was the Khartoum School that taught Ishaaq to be an artist. It was the goal of this movement to wed African and Islamic cultural traditions. This transcultural blending presented a sense of Sudanese nationalism expressed in earthy colors and Arabic calligraphy.[6]

The Crystalists

In 1978 Ishaaq and two of her students, Muhammad Hamid Shaddad and Naiyla al Tayib, rejected the Sudanese-centrism of the Khartoum School by creating the crystalist movement. The formation of this new approach was marked by a public declaration in the guise of the so-called crystalist manifesto. First published in Arabic, the document presented an artistic vision that attempted to work beyond the Sudanese-Islamic frameworks of the Khartoum School. Moreover, the crystalists sought to internationalize their art by embracing an existentialist avant-garde more akin to European aesthetics.[7]

If the Khartoum School can be described as modernist, then the crystalists should be classified as ultramodern within Sudanese artistic expression. Aesthetically, the crystalists presented the cosmos as a "project of a transparent crystal with no veils but an eternal depth" (from the crys-talist manifesto). Crystalist paintings often contained distorted human faces trapped within clear cubes or spheres, and, as stated in their manifesto, "oppose[d] the trend which calls for skill and craftsmanship as a measure of good work." Inherent in the clarity of existence of the crystalists was the feminist notion of unveiling—a significant facet amid the increased Islamization of postcolonial Sudan.[6]

References
  1. Hopkins.Peter (3 June 2014). Kenana Handbook of Sudan. Taylor & Francis. p. 839. ISBN 978-1-136-77525-3.
  2. "people - Sharjah Art Foundation". sharjahart.org. Retrieved 8 December 2018.
  3. Crystalist Group, Tate Etc.. Retrieved 30 May 2016.
  4. Modern African Art: A Basic Reading List at the Smithsonian Libraries.
  5. "Sudan, Democratic Republic of the | IV. Painting, graphic arts and sculpture", The Grove Encyclopedia of Islamic Art and Architecture.
  6. "Kamala Ishaaq". Sudan: Emergence of Singularities. Retrieved 21 March 2019.
  7. "Kamala Ibrahim Ishaq". AWARE Women artists / Femmes artistes. Retrieved 21 March 2019.
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