In a small studio overlooking a garden in the Kirkos neighbourhood of Addis Ababa, the artist and academic Abdelrahman Shangal sends messages to students displaced by the two-year-long war in his native Sudan. He also works on an abstract portrait, a form of art he sees as a “window” into what another is feeling and experiencing.
Along with other college lecturers and artists, Shangal (65) was part of a popular movement that demanded economic and democratic reform in Sudan after nearly three decades of dictatorial rule under president Omar al-Bashir. The campaign led to the ousting of al-Bashir, who was replaced in 2019 with a civilian prime minister, Dr Abdallah Hamdok.
[ We must not turn away from the crisis in SudanOpens in new window ]
From 2020 until 2022, Shangal served as the dean of the only public art school in Sudan, The College of Fine and Applied Art in Khartoum. But along with several other deans, he resigned in protest over a coup by the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), led by Genl Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, which overthrew Hamdok’s civilian government. “We said: we’re not going to work with this [government],” says Shangal. “We’ll go back when there are elections.”
A power struggle ensued between two factions within Sudan’s military forces and in April 2023, the SAF began fighting the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) led by Gen Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti. After the war broke out, Shangal stayed for three months before leaving Sudan. “There was no work and I have a family so I have to get some income, “ he says. “During a war, it is not logical to sell art and no one can buy it, of course.”
Last year, Shangal returned to Addis Ababa after a stint in Nairobi. He says he found the Kenyan capital too expensive and unsafe – “I like to feel free to walk at night in the city without having the feeling that someone can come and take your telephone.”
Shangal says he’s more comfortable in Ethiopia where he has academic ties with several universities from his time as a dean and when he researched sculpture from the Meroe kingdom.
Meanwhile, an offer of an apartment and studio space in Addis Ababa by a family working for a German aid agency has given Shangal stability and time to focus on his art and teaching.
In Shangal’s recent exhibition at the Fendika Culture Centre in Addis Ababa, the war in his home country was a recurring theme. “We have to be part of events in the art movement,” he says. “We are not to stop because of the war – we have to continue.”
In one painting, Shangal depicts Asia Abdelmajid, a famous Sudanese actress and teacher, buried in the grounds of a school where she died from a stray bullet fired as the SAF and RSF battled in Khartoum during the early weeks of the war in 2023.
Abdelmajid was the wife of the late Sudanese-Libyan poet and diplomat Muhammad al-Fayturi whose celebrated writings chronicled the legacy of race, class and colonialism in contemporary Africa and drew on his own experience as a black African living among Arabs. Other paintings in Shangal’s recent collection address sexual violence against women during the war and the bombardment of Khartoum.
Shangal says the art college, as well as his home and studio in the Sudanese capital, now lie in ruins. “Sometimes, when there is internet people post photos.” He teaches remotely – about 80 per cent of his students from Khartoum are scattered across Sudan and neighbouring countries. He says he has lost contact with his other students.
[ Sudanese refugees in Chad: 'There isn't enough food or water'Opens in new window ]
Students studying sculpture are told to use whatever materials are available to them – “If they cannot find plaster, they do clay; if they cannot find clay, they can do wood or plastic or cartons.”
Some classes are undertaken by video calls while others take place by exchanging voice notes and photographs on WhatsApp due to poor internet connection. “The important thing is that we tell the students that we trust them, so we continue the process with them,” he says.
“We have to speak about a ceasefire loudly,” Shangal says. “We have to have hope. We have to accept each other. We have to build our country in a new way so that we can live together in peace as a country – all of us.”
