Untitled from Prison Notebook
Ibrahim El-Salahi
Sudanese, born 1930
1976
A page from Ibrahim El‑Salahi’s 1976 prison notebook in ink on paper where the artist records hybrid, mask-like figures and handwritten Arabic as an act of bearing witness and inner survival.
A blotchy ink-wash silhouette with a mask-like head and bulbous torso faces a dense column of flowing Arabic script, the smudges, drips and small vignette sketches giving the page a raw, urgent intimacy.
Made under confinement, these notebook drawings fuse Sudanese, Islamic and modernist visual languages to create a personal, spiritual vocabulary of resistance that helped reshape postcolonial African and Arab modernism.
Medium
Ink on paper from a notebook with thirty-eight ink on paper drawings
Dimensions
11 1/4 × 6 5/8" (28.6 × 16.8 cm)
Classification
Department
Credit
Acquired through the generosity of Marlene Hess and James D. Zirin, Catie and Donald Marron, Alice and Tom Tisch (in honor of Christophe Cherix), Marnie Pillsbury and Committee on Drawings and Prints Fund
Accession
319.2017.14
Palette
Art Terms
Exhibitions
