The Monthly interviews Sudanese Sculptor and Artist – Omima Ahmed – Part 2 – Connecting with Painting

How did you develop your craft?

Following university, I worked as a restorer of antiquities in the National Museum of Sudan. From 2013 to 2022 I taught where I had previously studied, in the Department of Sculpture at the College of Fine Arts.

The process of working toward an exhibition, I have had five solo exhibitions and contributed to more than 35 group exhibitions, brings a discipline and focus that stimulates creativity. Sudanese history, folklore, culture, geography, climate, the colours and sounds that permeate the environment, all were factors inspiring my vision and creativity. Daily life in Sudan is drenched in sun-enhanced vibrant colours. In my paintings I look to use warm, direct colours, avoiding over dilution or blending.

My carvings and sculptures are deeply influenced by ancient Sudanese sculpture, ancient Kush civilization in particular. It included Kerma, Napata and Meroe civilizations infused with art’s various manifestations – carving, painting, music, dance, everything that I felt in the very core of my being expressed my Sudanese identity.

Direct inspiration from ancient Sudanese sculpture derived from the way in which it contained a form of abstraction in the external lines and was carved in one solid block without interspersed voids. My sculpting seeks to produce semi-abstractions, violent movement for vitality combined with thin fluid lines and soft curves to add grace. I seek to show harmony and balance between mass and space. I used a variety of materials, including marble, wood, metal, gypsum and cement.

What ideas or themes do you investigate through your work?

The creative process allows me to articulate my ideas, values and principles, give form to my beliefs and views. Art is a way to communicate meaning, messages, reflections on life. My works illustrate my convictions about a variety of issues. Naturally, as a woman – a mother, a daughter, a sister – a key concern is the rights of women and children. Women figure large in my work. Through women I address life in all its multi-faceted dimensions – love, family, peace, pain, struggle, injustice and inequality.

Women were integral to Sudan’s revolution and my work reflects their fight to rise-up against oppression, to pursue justice, equality, freedom. Sudanese women are strong and self-sufficient, despite suffering horrendous acts of violence along with the usual depredations of conflict as they shoulder the burdens of daily life. They seek calm, seek shelter, seek physical safety and psychological respite as they endure, survive. Through my work I want to show how Sudanese women stand tall, stay strong. They are the descendants of rebels and warriors who cherish their culture and are proud Pan-Africans.

What are you working on at the moment?

I am working on a project celebrating women in their manifold roles, honouring their service and sacrifice. The project is called ‘A Flower for you’. It depicts women in different poses in blue, the colour of Sudan’s revolution, set against a yellow background representing light, truth, hope and radiance, wrought with lotus flowers recalling Sudan’s Kushite heritage. My present situation in Northern Ireland precludes sculpting. At home I was blessed with a studio and a garden with large spaces under trees where I could sculpt freely. Since arriving in Belfast, I have turned to colouring. I enjoy painting and find it an effective medium through which I can express thoughts, feelings, visions and ideas.

As well as continuing to reflect my cultural identity, it provides a means of addressing a canon of universal concerns: love, beauty, peace, justice, equality, acceptance and celebration of the other. It is also a way to express my present lived reality where painting is an outlet for my own emotions, hopes, dreams and desires as I confront the reality of exile, the challenges of an alien environment, the pain of separation. At the same time, I am now more acutely aware than ever that how my work is viewed, received, will necessarily bring other meaning and interpretations to perceived overtones, elements and symbols within the artwork.

Here in Northern Ireland, all those that engage with my creations bring a new aesthetic dimension, making them a creative partner generating their own emotional responses, analysis and understanding according to their own perceptions of beauty and content as their culture and identity meet mine.