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Kamala Ibrahim Ishaq’s Plant Families
Abstract
This paper focuses on Sudanese modernist artist Kamala Ibrahim Ishaq and argues for the central importance of ecofeminism and gendered ecological narratives within her work. In 1976, Ishaq with four other artists released the Crystalist Manifesto, which presented a new vision of artistic practice in line with the changing political climate of the military regime, particularly in comparison to the artistic propositions of the Khartoum School. The artists insisted on transparency, duality, depth, and multiplicity in the place of essentialized and idealized clarity. In Ishaq’s work, this translated into distorted portraits of women inside of crystal cubes. Scholar Anneka Lenssen has described Ishaq’s connection to the Crystalists through her feminist interest in focusing on alternative forms of knowledge, and particularly interior knowledge. Ishaq’s work has also emphasized Zaar rituals, a cult of spirit possession practiced by women in central Sudan. Within these rituals, evil spirits are exorcised. Like in the crystal portraits, the portraits of the women within the Zaar images are similarly distorted. Yet beyond the formal similarity, these strands of Ishaq’s work can be linked in the ways that they specifically portray feminine experience as a source of powerful and alternative knowledge that is passed matrilineally through generations. Plants are present throughout Ishaq’s oeuvre and often physically connected to the women that are pictured, particularly within the last 15 years. For example, women involved in Zaar are shown as plants in Procession (Zaar) (2015) and women are held together by plants in Women in Cubes (2015). Women’s heads and bodies are surrounded by plants and linked to each other through their root systems, as in Two Women (Eve and Eve) (2016) and Four Faces of Eve (2016).This paper argues that Ishaq has developed a specifically ecofeminist practice, that links a long-standing interest in feminine knowledge with the roots and systems of plants. Plants function in her paintings as systems of knowledge and connection, as in Bait Al-Mal (2019), yet they are shown as primarily the purview of women. The presence of these plants, more than linking Ishaq’s portraits to a specific part of the earth, instead focus on the potential for ecological narratives that rely on gendered knowledge and experience.
Discipline
Art/Art History
Geographic Area
Sudan
Sub Area
None