Waleed Mohammed: Using art to preserve Sudan’s collective memory
Visual artist Waleed Mohammed documents Sudanese memory through art from Nairobi (Photo: RD)
Sudanese visual artist Waleed Mohammed is seeking to document and reclaim the country’s collective memory through artworks inspired by historical photographs and family albums. Drawing on his personal experience of war, displacement and the dispersal of his family, he uses painting, diverse materials and multimedia from his studio in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, to explore the transformations in Sudanese lives since the outbreak of war in April 2023, as well as memories of the years before it.
The beginnings
Waleed Mohammed’s relationship with painting began in childhood, before he decided to study fine art and specialise in the discipline. He graduated in March, shortly before the outbreak of war, following a long period of study. However, the events unfolding in Sudan forced him to leave the country and continue his artistic career abroad. He moved to Nairobi, where he embarked on a new chapter in his creative journey.
Old photographs and family albums have been among his most important sources of artistic inspiration. Since childhood, he has been fascinated by images documenting Sudan’s history and the details of its social life. This interest is reflected in his work, through which he seeks to reinterpret the country’s visual memory in contemporary artistic forms.
The artist draws on the archives of Sudanese photographers, including Rashid Mahdi and Gadalla Gubara, alongside other photographic sources. He seeks to transform images from family albums into paintings, so that they become more than historical documents, acquiring new meanings relating to identity, history, and collective memory.
The concept of post memory
Waleed’s work in this area engages with the archive of Sudanese photography, from family albums to old studio portraits. He revisits these images through painting, treating the process as an act of retrieval in which individual memory intersects with the collective trauma left by war, displacement, and family separation.
His approach resonates with the concept of post memory, developed by Marianne Hirsch in her research on the children of Holocaust survivors. The term describes the relationship of a later generation to a trauma it did not experience directly, but which is transmitted through photographs, stories, and silence.
The concept explores how subsequent generations relate to traumatic experiences endured by those who came before them. They do not remember these experiences themselves, but encounter them through stories, images, and inherited behaviours. Imagination, projection, and creativity mediate this relationship rather than direct recollection.
A striking duality of colour characterises Waleed’s work. Monochromatic grey bodies and faces evoke the fading and deterioration of photographs over time, set against richly saturated fields of colour, including deep indigo blue, crimson red and earthy yellow.
Faces become erased or obscured areas. Sometimes they are covered with embroidered threads; at other times, their features dissolve into the haze of brushstrokes or disappear behind dark glasses. Erasure itself becomes a visual language, conveying the fragility of memory and the loss of loved ones.
Different techniques coexist on the picture surface, including painting, embroidery, Arabic calligraphy, and deliberately exposed brushstrokes.
The concept also carries a critical dimension. Expanding its application too widely risks emptying it of meaning, while generalising trauma can obscure the distinctive experiences, memories, and identities of those who witnessed it.
In this context, Waleed Mohammed, who has himself experienced war and displacement, is not a distant inheritor of memory but a witness to it. His work therefore intersects with post memory approaches without belonging to the concept in its strictest sense. This distinction gives his artistic experience its particular character.
Speaking to Radio Dabanga from his studio in Nairobi, Waleed says his artistic experience cannot be separated from that of society, and that people’s suffering and the transformations they are experiencing have become central subjects in his work.
Notable paintings
The war and the dispersal of his family have had a profound influence on the subjects Waleed Mohammed explores in his art. He has become increasingly interested in individual and family photographs, seeing them as a means of maintaining his connection with relatives who have been scattered across different locations, including Libya.
His painting Awab illustrates this aspect of his experience. It is named after his nephew, who is currently in Libya. In his interview with Radio Dabanga, Waleed explains that he chose his nephew’s name to express how much he misses him and his desire to preserve his presence through the artwork, despite the distances imposed by the war.
Through this deeply personal experience, the artist seeks to express a much wider reality shared by Sudanese people separated by the conflict, forced to leave their homes and seek new lives in different places.
Spaces of escape
A striking painting of a woman hangs on the wall; her face covered with cotton fabric. Waleed later explains that it belongs to a collection of works he produced in Nairobi after the outbreak of war.
Another painting from the same collection depicts a seated woman. He calls the series Spaces of Escape, drawing inspiration from the waves of displacement, forced migration and fragmentation that Sudan has experienced.
Cotton features in some of the works, as part of his attempts to experiment with new locally available materials. The collection also makes extensive use of open spaces and empty areas, with figures depicted with incomplete features or partially obscured faces.
According to Waleed, this artistic treatment reflects the disruption the war has brought to people’s lives and social relationships, forcing them to abandon familiar places and seek new spaces.
Leaving home is no longer simply an escape from war, he suggests, but has become an attempt to build a different life in the places where displaced people have arrived.
‘Something special’
In one corner of the exhibition hangs a particularly significant painting of Waleed’s mother. He describes it as one of the works that inspires him and gives him a sense of closeness to her. It holds a special place in his heart.
He painted it last year in the Ugandan capital, Kampala.
Another work, entitled Something Special, is based on a photograph by Rashid Mahdi. Waleed explains that the painting dates back to 2022, when he produced it for a group touring exhibition that travelled to several European cities. It was one of three paintings he contributed to the exhibition, and the original photograph particularly caught his attention.
The artistic approach, he says, reflects the disruption the war has brought to people’s lives and social relationships, forcing them to leave familiar places and seek new spaces. Leaving is no longer merely an escape from conflict, but an attempt to build a different life in the places where displaced people have found themselves.
Incomplete images and the recovery of memory
Waleed Mohammed’s interest in memory extends to the use of a variety of artistic techniques, including multimedia and a process known as photocopy transfer. This technique allows photographs to be transferred onto a painting surface, where the artist can then work on them by hand using different materials.
In several of these works, the photographs appear incomplete, with sections missing or areas left blank. This is deliberate, encouraging viewers to reflect on what has disappeared and what the image can no longer fully reveal.
The idea intersects with his use of cotton, which can conceal certain features or make them less distinct, opening up space for reflection on absence, memory, and fragmentation.
Since the outbreak of war, the artist has returned more frequently to his family archive, alongside the historical photographs that inspired his earlier work. Personal photographs have become a means of reconnecting with family members while also expressing the collective memory of Sudanese people through everyday details and individual experiences.
Some of his paintings depicting children also carry memories of the early stages of his artistic journey. He drew inspiration from old photographs and archival material, including images and references associated with Khartoum magazine. These works formed part of his first solo exhibition, which he held in Khartoum.
The painting ‘Survivors’
Among the works associated with that period is a painting entitled Survivors. After the exhibition ended, the painting was taken to Germany, before Waleed recovered it several months ago.
He recalls his former studio in Khartoum as an important milestone in his artistic career. Returning to the city after the outbreak of war, he found that the studio was still standing and that many of his paintings and other works had not been stolen.
The survival of these works gave him a sense that part of his memory and artistic experience had been preserved, despite the destruction Sudan has suffered and the loss and dispersal experienced by its people.
Art as a space for expressing collective experience
In his interview with Radio Dabanga, Waleed Mohammed says his personal experience of displacement has had a direct impact on his work. An artist, he believes, carries within them part of their community’s experience and cannot genuinely express people’s suffering without engaging with it.
As a result, the subjects he explores are closely connected to both his personal experiences and the challenges facing Sudanese people amid the war.
He says his artistic perspective changed after leaving Sudan and moving to Nairobi. The experiences and events people go through influence how they think and the subjects they choose to explore.
For Waleed, the artistic message remains open to development as circumstances change and life raises new questions about memory and the future.
International events and exhibitions
Despite the circumstances imposed by the war, Waleed has continued to participate in artistic events outside Sudan, including exhibitions and programmes in Kampala, Europe, and the United States.
He has also held a solo exhibition in Kampala and taken part in artist residency programmes, which have given him access to studio facilities and opportunities to engage with artists from different backgrounds.
He is currently preparing for further exhibitions and artistic events during the coming year, as he seeks to continue developing his career despite the challenges of displacement.
‘Shilla’: bringing Sudanese artists together in Nairobi
Together with other Sudanese artists, Waleed Mohammed established an art collective in Nairobi called Shilla, following discussions about the importance of collaboration among artists who have been scattered across different countries by the war.
The group aims to move beyond the isolation of individual artistic experiences and create a shared space for working, creating, and expressing issues affecting Sudan through art.
It has already held two exhibitions in Nairobi, and its members hope to demonstrate the ability of Sudanese artists to continue creating despite the circumstances of war and displacement.
The collective also seeks to raise public awareness of what is happening in Sudan and introduce audiences to the experiences of Sudanese artists.
An international award
This November, Waleed is preparing to receive an award from the Prince Claus Fund, a Dutch organisation based in Amsterdam which recognises 100 artists from around the world each year.
In his interview with Radio Dabanga, Waleed expresses his happiness at being announced as one of the 100 artists selected internationally for the award.
However, he also acknowledges mixed feelings about personal achievements being celebrated against the backdrop of the difficult circumstances facing Sudan and its people as a result of the war.
The award announcement coincides with the organisation’s celebration of its 30th anniversary this month.
A message to the Sudanese people
In his message to the Sudanese people, Waleed Mohammed emphasises the importance of dialogue and working together to resolve disagreements.
Sudan, he says, is a country that belongs to everyone, and addressing its problems requires people to sit together and engage in dialogue before it is too late.
Waleed Mohammed in his studio:
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