Flying Happiness Factory from Prison Notebook
Ibrahim El-Salahi
Sudanese, born 1930
1976
An ink-on-paper page from Ibrahim El‑Salahi’s prison notebook that imaginatively transforms confinement into a hybrid, mechanical-bird and calligraphic emblem he calls a 'flying happiness factory.'
What strikes you is the precise black-ink linework: an ornate, armor-like bird-machine at the upper left, a shaded circular seal and flowing Arabic script boxed below it, all contrasted against the blank right-hand page so the drawing feels both intimate and urgent.
Created during detention, the work epitomizes El‑Salahi’s pioneering fusion of Islamic calligraphic tradition, African visual rhythms, and modernist abstraction, demonstrating how personal and political constraint generated new visual languages in postcolonial art.
Medium
Ink on paper from a notebook with thirty-eight ink on paper drawings
Dimensions
11 1/4 × 6 3/4" (28.6 × 17.1 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
319.2017.17
Palette
Art Terms
Exhibitions
