Kamala Ibrahim Ishag
With a career spanning over sixty years, Kamala Ibrahim Ishag (b.1939) is a defining figure of modern and contemporary art. Her widely recognised paintings use a distinctive palette rooted in the colours of the sun, sand and sky and contemplate the cyclical flow of life and the intangible aspects of women’s lives in Sudan.
Ishag’s work is inspired by the flora in her Khartoum home garden, mythology, the stories of spirits told by her mother and grandmothers, and the field research she carried out with spiritualist women convening healing Zar ceremonies, a traditional practice in North Africa and the surrounding region. From her time spent in London, Ishag has also drawn on William Blake’s visionary subjects and Francis Bacon’s distorted figures which she connected to the reflections of human faces and figures she saw during the 1960s in the curved windows of Underground trains.
Drawing on a diverse range of contexts, Ishag’s work embraces different landscapes, histories and subjects to contemplate themes of spirituality, kinship and human relationships with the natural world.
Kamala Ibrahim Ishag: States of Oneness is organised by Sharjah Art Foundation and Serpentine in collaboration with the Africa Institute, Sharjah.