In this lecture, Professor Chika Okeke-Agulu focuses on the calligraphic figuration of Ibrahim El Salahi (b. 1930), the country’s leading modernist and onetime political prisoner.
Two years after its political independence from Egypt and Britain in 1956, Sudan witnessed the first of many military coups that have been a recurring feature of the country’s postcolonial history. In this lecture, Professor Chika Okeke-Agulu focuses on the calligraphic figuration of Ibrahim El Salahi (b. 1930), the country’s leading modernist and onetime political prisoner. Okeke-Agulu shows how the sophisticated formalism of Salahi’s drawings constituted a meditative critique of General Jaafar Al Nimeiry’s dictatorship (1969-1985), which survived multiple coups d’état, by stoking religious and ethnic crises, and systematic suppression of all political opposition.
