The conflict seen through the lens of those who left home, fled abroad or insists on staying
By Rocco Bellantone
Until July 19, in the Sura Gallery, the exhibition “Resistance in memory: sudan visions”.
Mohamed Abuagla is a Civil Engineering student at Omdurman. The conflict, which began in April 2023 between the Sudanese army led by General Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan and the Fast Support forces (RSF) under the orders of Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, forced him to leave his home and move to Abbasyah Tagali, in the state of Kordofán del Sur.
Six years ago, Mohamed started photographing by hobby. Then, over the years and with Sudan in chaos, his passion became a need to capture through the objective the rare moments of suspension, calm and “normality” granted by war.
Some of Mohamed’s snapshots are exhibited, along with those of eight Sudanese photographers, in the photographic exhibition “Memory resistance: sudan visions”, open to the public until July 19 in the Sura Gallery in Madrid, within the Balqís bookstore (Arganzuela neighborhood), as part of the Photospaña Off Festival. The gallery makes guided visits announced every week on its Instagram account.
Of these nine photographers, five have fled from Sudan since the conflict broke out, two have been displaced and two others have been living in their homes. Four are under 25 years old, such as Mohamed.
The photographs exhibited in Madrid report the thousands of lives broken by this war. Inside are the stories of families separated by the brutality of weapons: on the one hand, the children who have opted for exile; On the other, the parents entrenched in their homes, waiting for their return. And there are the interrupted dialogues: between the past and present, between tradition and modernity, among generations that can no longer exchange anything or enrich each other.
A total of 62 photographs are exposed, divided into five thematic areas. The first is dedicated to the 2019 Revolution, which led the Sudanese town to the streets and ended with the deposition of the dictator Omar Al-Bashir and the uprisings that followed the 2021 coup d’etat, in which the military ended the government led by Prime Minister Abdallah Hamdok.
The second area shows images of Sudanese forced to flee abroad. The third revives the drama of the internal displaced. The fourth reflects on the devastating effects of this war and the way in which civilians bursts into the personal sphere. Finally, the fifth houses a hope: that this conflict ends as soon as possible, returning to the Sudanese their lives and their country. In the background, Darfur’s endless crisis, absorbed for the umpteenth time by a spiral of violence and, once again, soon forgotten.
“Many of these people were not photographers before the revolution and war,” he explains to The country Edith Arance, director of the Sura Gallery, who found the snapshots searching for social networks. Some with professional cameras, others with simple smartphones, all, according to Arance, “found in photography a way of expressing their emotions, their hopes, their fears.”
Altayeb Morhal, born in 1993 in Northern Kordofán, is a photographer, video filmmaker and narrator. In recent years he has documented the protests of 2021 that took place after the military coup and were soon repressed with blood. In Nairobi, where he lives now, he continues to narrate the resistance of his people through various records, tending visual bridges between his past and his present, his tradition and modernity.
Fakhr Aldein, born in 1998, originally from Karima, in the northern state, is a photographer and electronic engineer. He left Jartum, the city where he lived, a month after the beginning of the war; First he found refuge in Port Sudan, in the Red Sea, where he began to photograph the daily life of displaced families, and then moved to Dubai. Its snapshots are a metaphor to describe the decline of your country: as the agony of a ignition cigarette, destined to become ashes.
There are also those who have remained alive in Sudan despite the horrors of the conflict. As Al-Mujtaba Ahmed (born in 1994), who did not abandon Omdurman, not even at the time the city seemed sentenced to succumb under the blows of Dagalo’s rapid support forces. In his photos is all the violence of this war, but also color, life, strength and hope.
Shaima Merghani (born in 1997), doctor and artist, didn’t leave either. Before the war, his photos captured the details of the street life of Omdurman. Now they have become the last useful space in which they can develop their ideas, cultivate their dreams and feed the hope of a different tomorrow.
