While the article below describes an earlier exhibit in New York City, Africa Speaks 4 Africa felt it important to highlight the artist featured – Ibrahim El-Salahi – regarded by some as one of the most important contemporary African artists of our time.
Beginning in 2012 and through 2013, a traveling retrospective of one of the greatest living African artists made stops at museums in Sharjah, Doha, and ultimately, London, disseminating the powerful visual language ofIbrahim El-Salahi. The show was curated by Salah Hassan, who recognizedthe pioneering Sudanese artist’s pivotal role in African modernism—and the constraints of art history that have hindered his significance.
“El-Salahi is arguably one of the most important modern African artists alive,” said curator Elvira Dyangani Ose, who co-curated the retrospective at the Tate with Hassan. “His vibrant, experimental and enduring body of work helped to write one of the most critical chapters of Sudanese art, in particular, and African art, in general.” But while the show made a triumphal final stop at the Tate Modern (it was the British institution’s first solo show dedicated to an African artist), and a handful of international galleries have shown the artist, who is now 85 years old, over the past few years, El-Salahi has remained largely under-recognized in the U.S., perhaps until now.
| Image credits: Ibrahim El-Salahi. Reborn Sounds III, 2015, Vigo Gallery |