Amna Elhassan (, born 1988 in

Khartoum Khartoum or Khartum is the capital city of Sudan as well as Khartoum State. With an estimated population of 7.1 million people, Greater Khartoum is the largest urban area in Sudan. Khartoum is located at the confluence of the White Nile – flo ...

Sudan Sudan, officially the Republic of the Sudan, is a country in Northeast Africa. It borders the Central African Republic to the southwest, Chad to the west, Libya to the northwest, Egypt to the north, the Red Sea to the east, Eritrea and Ethiopi ...

) is a Sudanese visual artist and trained architect, who lives and works in Khartoum. Her artistic work is often focused on the perception of Sudanese women in public and private life, expressed in a variety of media, including

printmaking Printmaking is the process of creating work of art, artworks by printing, normally on paper, but also on fabric, wood, metal, and other surfaces. "Traditional printmaking" normally covers only the process of creating prints using a hand proces ...

and

painting Painting is a Visual arts, visual art, which is characterized by the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surface (called "matrix" or "Support (art), support"). The medium is commonly applied to the base with ...

Life and work experience

In 2010, Elhassan obtained a

Bachelor's A bachelor's degree (from Medieval Latin ''baccalaureus'') or baccalaureate (from Modern Latin ''baccalaureatus'') is an undergraduate degree awarded by colleges and universities upon completion of a course of study lasting three to six years ( ...

degree in architecture from the

University of Khartoum The University of Khartoum (U of K) () is a public university located in Khartoum, Sudan. It is the largest and oldest university in Sudan. UofK was founded as Gordon Memorial College in 1902 and established in 1956 when Sudan gained independen ...

, followed in 2013 by a master's degree in

architectural design Building design, also called architectural design, refers to the broadly based architectural, engineering and technical applications to the design of buildings. All building projects require the services of a building designer, typically a licen ...

at the Sapienza University in Rome, Italy. After her return to Sudan, she dedicated herself to fine arts and painting, working with her mentor, Sudanese artist Hatim Koko, at the Khartoum Arts Training Centre. Her first exhibitions were shown in Khartoum at Rashid Diab Arts Center and the National Museum of Sudan, among others, from 2016 onwards. Further, she has shown her work at several international exhibitions, and in July 2022 was invited as a guest lecturer at the

University of Fine Arts of Hamburg A university () is an institution of tertiary education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. ''University'' is derived from the Latin phrase , which roughly means "community of teachers and scholars". Univ ...

, Germany, teaching a class titled “Art During Times Of Crisis”. Her work was also featured in the 2019

art book Artists' books (or book arts or book objects) are works of art that engage with and transform the form of a book. Some are mass-produced with multiple editions, some are published in small editions, while others are produced as one-of-a-kind ob ...

''Sudan retold'' as part of a group of young artists telling their artistic versions of Sudanese history, present and future. According to ''

The Economist ''The Economist'' is a British newspaper published weekly in printed magazine format and daily on Electronic publishing, digital platforms. It publishes stories on topics that include economics, business, geopolitics, technology and culture. M ...

'', writing about the latest exhibition in London's

Serpentine Gallery The Serpentine Galleries are two contemporary art galleries in Kensington Gardens, Westminster, Greater London. Recently rebranded to just Serpentine, the organisation is split across Serpentine South, previously known as the Serpentine Galler ...

of Sudanese senior painter and art teacher

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 ...

, Elhassan is a prominent Sudanese artist, painting

oneiric Oneiric most commonly refers to: * Dreams, during sleep * Oneirology, the science of dreams Oneiric may also refer to: * Oneiric (film theory), dreams as a metaphor for film—or in critiques thereof * ''Oneiric'' (album), 2006, by Boxcutter * '' ...

figures influenced by Ishaq's Crystallist Group movement.

Solo exhibition in Frankfurt

On show from November 2022 until February 2023, the Schirn art museum in

Frankfurt/Main Frankfurt am Main () is the most populous city in the States of Germany, German state of Hesse. Its 773,068 inhabitants as of 2022 make it the List of cities in Germany by population, fifth-most populous city in Germany. Located in the forela ...

, Germany, announced a

solo exhibition A solo show or solo exhibition is an art exhibition, exhibition of the work of only one artist. Rather than a group of artists who collaborate to form an exhibition. The artwork may be paintings, drawings, etchings, collage, sculpture, or photogr ...

by Elhassan titled ''Deconstructed Bodies – in Search of Home.'' Conceived especially for the

rotunda A rotunda () is any roofed building with a circular ground plan, and sometimes covered by a dome. It may also refer to a round room within a building (an example being the one below the dome of the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C.). ...

of the internationally renowned art museum, her large-format

mural A mural is any piece of Graphic arts, graphic artwork that is painted or applied directly to a wall, ceiling or other permanent substrate. Mural techniques include fresco, mosaic, graffiti and marouflage. Word mural in art The word ''mural'' ...

titled "December" is meant as a monument to the victims of the

Sudanese Revolution The Sudanese revolution () was a major shift of political power in Sudan that started with street protests throughout Sudan on 19 December 2018 and continued with sustained civil disobedience for about eight months, during which the 2019 S ...

that started in December 2018 and was largely supported by Sudanese women. Apart from her large mural, the exhibition presents 21 paintings and prints that Elhassan has produced since 2019, showing scenes of everyday life as well as portraits of Sudanese women. At the same time, Elhassan's artworks and accompanying texts were published as a first overview on her work in an art historical publication. In a review ''

Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung The (; ''FAZ''; "Frankfurt General Newspaper") is a German newspaper founded in 1949. It is published daily in Frankfurt and is considered a newspaper of record for Germany. Its Sunday edition is the ''Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung'' ( ...

'' wrote "Her experimental paintings and prints, created in different analogue and

digital Digital usually refers to something using discrete digits, often binary digits. Businesses *Digital bank, a form of financial institution *Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) or Digital, a computer company *Digital Research (DR or DRI), a software ...

techniques and for which she uses oil, acrylic and spray paint in layers on paper and canvas, address the change and resistance of Sudanese women." According to Sebastian Baden, the director of the Schirn art museum, Elhassan is "an important voice of artistic self-empowerment in Sudan." Further, he added: "With her site-specific panorama painting in the rotunda of the Schirn, Elhassan sets a sign of courage and commitment to a vibrant democracy. The artist has dedicated a forward-looking artistic memorial to the victims of the

Khartoum massacre The Khartoum massacre occurred on 3 June 2019, when the armed forces of the Sudanese Transitional Military Council, headed by the Lieutenant-General Abdel Fattah Abdelrahman Burhan of the Sudan Armed Forces and his deputy, Mohamed Hamdan Daga ...

." Commenting on Elhassan's working method with Sudanese

graffiti Graffiti (singular ''graffiti'', or ''graffito'' only in graffiti archeology) is writing or drawings made on a wall or other surface, usually without permission and within public view. Graffiti ranges from simple written "monikers" to elabor ...

and the political message of the mural "December",

curator A curator (from , meaning 'to take care') is a manager or overseer. When working with cultural organizations, a curator is typically a "collections curator" or an "exhibitions curator", and has multifaceted tasks dependent on the particular ins ...

Larissa-Diana Fuhrmann called the exhibition "a direct connection between the protests on the Sudanese street with the museum space" in Frankfurt.

Group and solo exhibitions

* Rashid Diab Arts Center, Khartoum, 2017 * National Museum of Sudan, Khartoum, 2016 * Journées d'Art Contemporain de Carthage JACC,

Tunis Tunis (, ') is the capital city, capital and largest city of Tunisia. The greater metropolitan area of Tunis, often referred to as "Grand Tunis", has about 2,700,000 inhabitants. , it is the third-largest city in the Maghreb region (after Casabl ...

, 2019 * Afriart Gallery in Kampala, Uganda, 2020 * Egypt International Art Fair, Cairo, Egypt, 2021 * University of Fine Arts, Hamburg, Germany, 2022 * Schirn art museum in Frankfurt/Main, Germany, 2022/2023

References

External links

Official website
with images of her paintings *
Five good reasons to view Amna Elhassan in the Schirn"
- Description and photographs of the exhibition in Frankfurt
Video of Amna Elhassan's exhibition Deconstructed Bodies - In Search of Home
on

YouTube YouTube is an American social media and online video sharing platform owned by Google. YouTube was founded on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim who were three former employees of PayPal. Headquartered in ...

* Art boo
''Sudan retold'' online version

Amna Elhassan
on artsy.net {{DEFAULTSORT:Elhassan, Amna 1988 births Living people University of Khartoum alumni 21st-century Sudanese painters Sudanese contemporary artists Sudanese artists Sudanese women artists Sudanese women painters Sapienza University of Rome alumni 21st-century women painters

Life and work experience

Solo exhibition in Frankfurt

Group and solo exhibitions

See also

References

Further reading

External links