Art on the front lines of a changing Sudan

Two years on, Sudanese artists who participated in the 2019 revolution fear for the country’s stability.

Khartoum, Sudan – On the exterior wall of Khartoum’s morgue, a peach-coloured building attached to a hospital, a spray-painted corpse-hand with green fingernails emerges from the ground. On one of the fingers is a tag with the word “missing” – a reminder of the 200 bodies that remain inside, most of them unidentified protesters shot during the 2019 revolution. The whiff of decomposing bodies lingers on the street, the result of persistent power cuts which cause the refrigerators inside to turn off daily. Next to the painting of the hand, the word “anger” is written in Arabic. The mural is just one of hundreds that have emerged on walls across Sudan’s capital in the two years since the revolution. Most depict martyrs, politicians, Nubian queens, and the crimes of the former regime of Omar al-Bashir. What started out as protests against rising food and fuel costs in December 2018, turned into a coup d’etat by April 2019. The eight-month-long protests included sit-ins, boycotts, a “millions march”, and the removal of al-Bashir after 30 years in power. Sudan then saw the establishment of a joint civilian and military government, known as the Sovereign Council, to lead a 39-month transition to democracy.