...According to Abdel Latif Dahir, the movement to use art to support change harkens back to the modernist art of The Khartoum School that developed in post-independence Sudan in 1960. By using visual art in activism, younger generations are continuing “that memory and legacy of standing up against totalitarian governments and military regimes,” says art historian and the director of the Institute of Comparative Modernities at Cornell University Salah Hassan.
Speaking in July in Quartz Africa in a piece titled: “Sudan’s street protests have inspired another revolution—in art,” Dahir, who holds a master’s degree in political journalism, wrote that since the uprising “murals, paintings, and graphic art have sprung across the nation: agitating peace, extolling the place of demonstrators and martyrs, exhorting the world to stand up for the Sudanese people, and imagining a better future. Besides painting, free books were distributed at the protest sites in Khartoum, drawing tents set up for children, and music concerts held that drew tens of thousands of people.”
Read the entire article in The Final Cut.
