Kamala Ibrahim Ishaq

Kamala Ibrahim Ishaq (, born 1939) is a Sudanese painter and art teacher, known as one of the founders of The Crystalist conceptual art group in Khartoum. This group rejected common conventions in Sudanese modern painting of the 1960s and strived to find "an aesthetic and critical language that would emphasise the notions of pleasure and knowledge in order to permanently abolish differences and boundaries".

Artistic career

Influences and contributions Ishaq's artistic and spiritual influences go back to the works of William Blake and the Zār spiritual rituals of Sudanese women.

The Crystalist Movement In 1978 Ishaq and two of her students, Muhammad Hamid Shaddad and Nayla El Tayib, started the conceptual art movement called Crystalist Group that broke away from traditional practices in the Sudanese art scene. Their intention was to distinguish themselves from the Khartoum School of painting and their traditional male-centred outlook. This new approach in Sudanese painting was marked by a public declaration in the form of the so-called Crystalist Manifesto. First published in Arabic as Al-Bayan al-Kristali, the document presented an artistic vision that attempted to work beyond the Sudanese-Islamic framework of the Khartoum School. Moreover, the Crystalists sought to internationalize their art by embracing an existentialist avant-garde, more akin to European aesthetics.

Aesthetically, the Crystalist manifesto understood the cosmos as a "project of a transparent crystal with no veils, but an eternal depth". Crystalist paintings often contain distorted human faces, trapped within clear cubes or spheres, and, as stated in their manifesto, "oppose the trend which calls for skill and craftsmanship as a measure of good work." Inherent in the notions of the Crystalists was the feminist notion of unveiling — a significant facet amid the increasing Islamization of postcolonial Sudan. Further, they rejected the Hurufiyya movement that used Arabic calligraphy in artworks, positing that letters do not lead to great works of art.

Exhibitions Along with other African artists, Ishaq's paintings have been shown at Saatchi Gallery in London in the exhibition titled Forests and Spirits: Figurative Art from the Khartoum School from September to November 2018, and one of her works from this exhibition was sold by auction house Sotheby's in London in 2020. In October 2022, Serpentine South Gallery in London opened a retrospective exhibition covering works since her early years until the present.

Major exhibitions include:

Camden Arts Centre, London, 1970 National Museum of Women in Art, Washington, DC, 1994 Sharjah Art Museum, UAE, 1995 Whitechapel Gallery, London, 1995 Breaking the veils: Women artists from the Islamic world, Royal Society of Fine Arts, Jordan, 2002 Shibrain Art Centre, Khartoum, 2014 Institut français, Khartoum, 2015 Women in Crystal Cubes, Sharjah Art Foundation, 2016 Serpentine South Gallery, London, 2022–23