| The Collection - 1995 to 2015 |

Abushariaa Ahmed, Sudan

4th November - 2nd December 2018

'Wild Animal', Ink on Paper, 40cm x 30cm, 1997,

Abushariaa Ahmed was born in 1966 in Omdurman, Sudan. He graduated in 1990 from Sudan University’s College of Fine & Applied Arts.

His style is influenced by the pioneers of Sudan’s contemporary art scene, including Ibrahim el Salahi, Professor Shipprain and Rashid Diab. In the 1960s their Khartoum School was recognised as an emergent modernist movement, a synthesis of Western influences and traditions that captures Sudan’s diversity. Abushariaa left the Sudan in the mid-90s and spent some years in Kenya as an artist in residence at the Paa ya Paa Arts Centre in Nairobi. He later lived for a short period in Cologne, Germany, before settling in Kampala, Uganda, in 2000, where he works as a freelance artist. 
His semi-abstract, colourful, mixed-media artwork and his distinctive ink drawings are rich with ornamental and patterned symbols of his Nubian culture and Arabic calligraphy.

It was in the mid-90s when the gallery owners first met Abushariaa, a young upcoming artist in residence at the Paa ya Paa Art Centre in Nairobi. Since then a long lasting friendship with Abushariaa exists and over a period of almost 30 years the gallery owners have acquired a broad collection of his art works, from his earlier meticulously executed mixed medium watercolour – pastel paintings, distinctive ink drawings to the large scale oil-mixed medium paintings of the Darfur Series, a response to the civil war in Darfur. This exhibition shows part of the extensive collection.

Abushariaa has exhibited extensively in East Africa, Canada, USA, Germany, Denmark, Monaco and the UK. His artwork is held in many private and public collections all over the world – in the African Museum of Art in Seoul, South Korea and in the collection of the World Bank in Washington DC, USA amongst others.

Recent Exhibitions