The visual arts of Sudan encompass the historical and contemporary production of objects made by the inhabitants of today's Republic of the Sudan and specific to their respective cultures. This encompasses objects from cultural traditions of the region in North-East Africa historically referred to as the Sudan, including the southern regions that became independent as South Sudan in 2011.
Throughout its history, Sudan has been a crossroads between North Africa, Egypt, Mediterranean cultures, parts of West Africa and the Red Sea coast in the east of the country. Before the 20th century, these cultural traditions were influenced by indigenous African, Pharaonic, Greco-Roman, Byzantine and Arabic cultures that have brought about a large diversity of cultural expressions, often specific to the ethnic or social group that produced and used them.In the article on the cultural life in Sudan, the Encyclopædia Britannica writes: "The key to an understanding of contemporary Sudanese culture is diversity. Each major ethnic group and historical region has its own special forms of cultural expression. (...) Because of Sudan's great cultural diversity, it is difficult to classify the traditional cultures of the various peoples. Sudan's traditional societies have diverse linguistic, ethnic, social, cultural, and religious characteristics. And, although improved communications, increased social and economic mobility, and the spread of a money economy have led to a general loosening of the social ties, customs, relationships, and modes of organization in traditional cultures, much from the past still remains intact." As expressions of the material culture of a society, applied arts and handicrafts are included with the fine arts in this history of the arts in Sudan.
Starting in the early 19th century, the establishment of first the Turkish-Egyptian and later the Anglo-Egyptian rule, characterised by foreign military and political domination, ushered in the gradual evolution of a modern nation state with new cultural influences on the lifestyles and material culture of the Sudanese.
After independence in 1956, Sudanese graduates of the colonial education system took over leading positions in the new state and thus contributed to the emergence of urban culture and modern art. These cultural developments became most visible from the 1950s to the 1980s, a period that was later called "The Making of the Modern Art Movement in Sudan".
In the 21st century, visual artistic developments in the country have been characterised by digital forms of communication, including audio-visual art spread and received through satellite television, online media as well as images and films shared through social media.This is mainly true for people with access to electronic devices, which still excludes large sections of Sudanese society, especially in rural areas. These changes in communication, style of life and general attitudes are of growing importance. During the Sudanese Revolution of 2018 and 2019, young artists contributed to the protests and morale of the popular movement, creating wall paintings, graffiti, cartoons, photographs or video messages.
Historical periods preceding contemporary Sudan
Prehistoric times
The oldest existent objects of material artifacts in Nubia, such as stone tools, date back to prehistoric times. The Sabu-Jaddi rock art site is a unique cluster of more than 1600 rock drawings from different historical periods expanding for more than 6000 years through different eras of Nubian civilization. The well-preserved drawings represent wild and domestic animals, humans and boats and were included by the World Monuments Fund in its list of monuments to watch. Other ancient rock drawings were found in the arid valley known as Wadi Abu Dom in the Bayuda Desert. Another important prehistoric site was found in the border region between Sudan, Libya and Egypt in the Gabal El Uweinat mountain range. In Sudan's western region, the Jebel Mokram Group, characterized by its pottery and small clay figures of animals, was a prehistoric, Neolithic culture that flourished in the second millennium BCE.Rodolfo Fattovich: The late prehistory of the Gash Delta (Eastern Sudan). In Late Prehistory of the Nile Basin and the Sahara, Poznan, Poland, 1989, p. 496
Kerma and the Kingdom of Kush
From the Kerma culture (2500–1500 BCE), the seat of one of the earliest civilizations of ancient Africa, weapons, items of pottery and other household objects are presented in museums such as the National Museum of Sudan, Kerma Museum, British Museum, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
During the Kingdom of Kush (about 950 BCE–CE 350), when the monarchs of Kush ruled their northern neighbour Egypt as pharaos for over a century, Nubian statues like the sphinx of Taharqa acquired Egyptian features and were erected in temples or Nubian pyramids, such as in Meroe,"Although some Nubian beliefs and customs continued, an Egyptianization dominated in ideas, practices, and iconography and indeed even overwhelmed them." Shillington, Kevin (4 July 2013). Encyclopedia of African History 3-Volume Set. Routledge. , p. 700. one of Sudan's World Heritage Sites. Among other resources, the material culture of ancient Nubia used gold, ivory, ebony, incense, hides or precious stones, and necklaces or bracelets have been found in tombs of royal families. Nubian kings and queens, the latter called Kandakes of Kush, were represented in stone reliefs on temples, like the one dedicated to Apedemak (The Lion Temple) at Naqa. Other examples of ancient Nubian architecture are rock-cut temples, mud-brick temples called deffufa, graves with stoned walls or dwellings made of mudbricks, wood and stone floors, palaces and well laid out roads.Bianchi, Robert Steven. Daily Life of the Nubians. Westport: Greenwood Press, 2004, pp. 227,
Influences by Greco-Roman culture
From the 3rd century BCE to the 3rd century CE, northern Nubia was invaded and annexed to Egypt, which was ruled by the Ptolemaic Kingdom and later the Roman Empire. Cultural influences of this period as far south as in Nubia can be seen in the so-called 'Roman baths' in Meroe, an excavated building called "an outstanding example of cultural transfer between the African kingdom and the Greco-Roman culture of the Mediterranean."Another example of Roman art is the so-called Meroë Head, or Head of Augustus from Meroë, a larger-than-life-size bronze head depicting the first Roman emperor, Augustus, that was found in the ancient Nubian site of Meroë in 1910, and then was taken to the British Museum.
Another example of cultural influence from Nubia during Ptolemaic rule in Egypt is a marble head of a Nubian young man, probably made in the Eastern Mediterranean Region, and now exhibited in the Brooklyn Museum in the US.
Medieval Nubia In medieval Nubia (c. 500–1500 CE), the inhabitants of the Christian kingdoms Makuria, Nobadia, and Alodia produced distinct forms of architecture, like the Faras Cathedral, sculptures, and wall paintings, of which more than 650 have been published in modern scholarly texts.Zielinska, Dobrochna; Tsakos, Alexandros (2019). "Representations of Archangel Michael in Wall Paintings from Medieval Nubia". In Ingvild Sælid Gilhus; Alexandros Tsakos; Marta Camilla Wright (eds.). The Archangel Michael in Africa. History, Cult and Persona. Bloomsbury Academic. pp. 79–94. These relate to the Coptic art of Egypt, and sometimes to Ethiopian art. They used the Old Nubian language, Coptic, Greek or Arabic for different religious or secular texts, preserved on manuscripts or as inscriptions on sandstone, marble or terracotta.Welsby, Derek (2002). The Medieval Kingdoms of Nubia. Pagans, Christians and Muslims along the Middle Nile. The British Museum.
Even though Muslim migrants, probably merchants and artisans, are confirmed to have settled in Lower Nubia from the 9th century onwards, the actual Islamization of Nubia began in the late 14th century.
Arrival of Islam and Arabization
In the 16th and 17th centuries, new Islamic kingdoms were established – the Funj Sultanate and the Sultanate of Darfur, starting a long period of gradual Islamization and Arabization in Sudan. These sultanates and their societies existed until the Sudan was conquered by the Ottoman Egyptian invasion in 1820, and in the case of Darfur, even until 1916.Alan Moorehead, The Blue Nile, revised edition. (1972). New York: Harper and Row, p. 215 Major cultural changes of this period were marked by the adoption of the Islamic religion and growing use of the Arabic Language as elements of everyday life. Other cultural developments were reported by foreign visitors such as Frédéric CailliaudPhilippe Mainterot, "La redécouverte des collections de Frédéric Cailliaud : contribution à l'histoire de l'égyptologie", Histoire de l'Art, no 62, mai 2008 (). and relate to the architecture of towns and mosques, the manufacture of weapons like throwing knives or kaskara swords"While most surviving examples are from the 19th century, the kaskara is believed to have originated around the early 14th century, and may represent a localized survival of the straight, double-edged medieval Arab sword." Source: – and the slave trade. In this period, schools for the Arabic language and for Islamic studies, called khalwa, were founded and Sufi brotherhoods took roots in Sudan. Examples of their material culture are a flag with the Islamic statement of faith, now in the British Museum, or a wooden tablet of the late 19th century, used as writing board for students learning the Quran, presented online by the Brooklyn Museum, New York City.According to the Brooklyn Museum webpage, "students would have used wooden writing boards like this one as a notebook, copy book, or slate, practicing their calligraphy and memorizing passages from the Qur'an. In addition to Arabic script, geometric borders, curlicues, stylized drawings of scorpions, four-legged animals, and men on horseback embellish this writing board."
The 19th and 20th century until independence From the beginning of the 19th century onwards, drawings or photographs, taken by foreign visitors, constitute some of the earliest records for the traditional arts of different ethnic and social groups, such as architecture, dress, hairstyles, jewellery or scarifications.The images taken by Austrian travel writer Richard Buchta during the 1870s are regarded as the earliest photographs of ethnic people living along the White Nile and beyond. Source:
After the first period of Turkish-Egyptian rule (1821–1885), the Mahdist State (1885–1899) left important traces in Omdurman, one of the three major areas of greater Khartoum. The tomb of the Mahdi, the Khalifa House, Mahdist coins and specific types of dress, like the jibba coat worn by the Mahdi's followers, bear witness to the cultural character of this period.