Abusharia serves feast of colours and semi-abstract imagery – Business Daily
Untitled painting by Abusharia Ahmed at Red Hill Gallery in Nairobi on October 2, 2022. PHOTO | POOL
Evidence that Red Hill Art Gallery has the makings of a modern or contemporary African art museum manifested itself last Sunday, October 2.
That was the day the solo exhibition of Retrospective works by the Sudanese artist Abusharia Ahmed went on display. Yet none of it was for sale.
Most galleries put price tags on every painting, sculpture, or print that’s on display. Most museums do not. The tags might be discrete, but they are always around since galleries are commercial enterprises and artists also need to survive.
Red Hill is a mix of both gallery and museum, since Hellmuth Rossler-Musch has collected such a formidable body of East African art, he often feels compelled to share it with the world.
That’s how he chose to share some of Abushariaa’s finest paintings at his gallery, but none are for sale. The Kampala-based artist has been exhibiting quietly in Kenya since the early 1990s when he accepted Elimo Njau’s invitation to attend one of Paa ya Paa’s art workshops.
He was living in Khartoum at the time, but he became one of the first Sudanese artists to arrive in Kenya and stay at Paa ya Paa as an artist in-residence for several years. Coincidently, he began to sell his art through Saraag Gallery around the same time as Hellmuth was beginning to seriously collect East African art, starting at Watatu and Saraag.
Sudanese artist Abusharia Ahmed at Red Hill Gallery in Nairobi on October 2, 2022. PHOTO | POOL
Eventually, Hellmuth assembled one of the largest collections of East African art around. And his collection of Abushariaa’s works is by far the biggest of all. And his Retrospective display is a feast filled with rich colours and semi-abstract imagery.
Since 1994 when he first arrived in Nairobi fresh out of the University of Khartoum, he had no means of making art. All he had was his one Nairobi contact, Elimo Njau and Paa Ya Paa.
“I was warmly welcomed by Elimo who made me an artist-in-residency at the gallery,” Abu tells the BDLife.
Abu initially solved the problem of art materials by mixing cheap Chinese watercolours with ordinary house paint.
“We called the watercolours ‘cheezy’,” he says, laughing as he remembers those days of sacrifice and toil.
Then when he got his first job, working as an illustrator, he got his hands on printers’ ink which became part of his mixed media process. And although his job was full-time, he says he used to come home and paint all night. He loves his art practice that much.
Abushariaa’s love of artistic expression grew out of a happy childhood. From age four to five, he was accompanying his father, a ladies’ tailor, to work.
“I used to sit at my father’s feet, playing with all the scraps of cloth that fell on the floor as he worked,” he says. “I still remember some of the patterns I used to play with. They sometimes appear in my art,” he says speaking of the semi-abstract images that appear in his work.
Many of Abu’s early works are made with that mixed media. “But look how they have stood the test of time,” he tells me as we walk around to one side of the gallery where his earliest watercolours on paper have been carefully kept by Hellmuth for nearly 30 years.
Another series on a separate wall is tinted brown, while another series is all black and white. And at a recent exhibition he had at Tribal Gallery, he had one series that was all blue, and another in purple hues.
Abushariaa claims that every colour carries with it some special significance. For instance, one of his dearest friend’s died recently.
“He had a special love of that colour blue. That is why I painted the series in that shade of blue. It was the one he loved.”
While Abushariaa stayed at Paa ya Paa, he says he spent a lot of time listening to Elimo the storyteller. “I learned a lot from him,” he says, noting that Sudanese artists have been coming to Kenya ever since and staying for a time at Elimo’s place while they get their bearings and then move on.
“But I always come back to Paa ya Paa,” Abu says, noting that his art has opened many doors for him to exhibit and visit various countries, most notably South Africa and Germany.
For now, he is based in Kampala with his family. ‘But wherever I go, I never stop painting. It makes me happy to paint, and I hope it makes other people happy as well.”
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