A diverse group of academics, activists, officials and rebels contribute chapters about different aspects of conflict in the western Sudanese region of Darfur. These chapters discuss the origins and evolution of the conflict, the various ways in which the conflict has been understood and misperceived (both locally and internationally), the profoundly gendered nature of the conflict, the status of those involved with regard to the Sudanese and international law, and the ongoing struggle for peace in the region. A substantial appendix reproduces UN, ICC, and (many for the first time in English translation) Arabic-language documents to trace the history of the conflict. The book also includes a chronology of major events in Sudan
The 2015 Egyptian Surrealists in Global Perspective conference, and the companion 2016 exhibition When Art Becomes Liberty: The Egyptian Surrealists (1938–1965), both held in Cairo, Egypt, explored the history and evolution of the work of Egyptian surrealists and their remarkable legacy within Egypt and in international surrealist circles. This article serves as a preview of contributions to this special issue of Nka, which serves as a followup to these two events, documenting the relationship of the Egyptian surrealists with Western counterparts, especially the French surrealists, and their contributions to internationalism, antifascist global protest, and decolonization, staged and performed outside the West. The artistic and intellectual output of the Egyptian surrealists was primarily centered around activities initiated by the Art and Liberty group (Jama'at al-Fann Wa al-Hurriyyah), the Contemporary Art Group (Jama'at al-Fann al-Mu'asir), and the artists who exhibited with one or both of these groups. In addition to more traditional artistic genres, photography played an important role in the surrealists' artistic practices of the time, as is examined in this issue. This introduction, and the contributions to this issue of Nka that it surveys, affirm that the Egyptian surrealists, among other non-Western modernists, represent the multifaceted aspects of modernity and its global interconnectedness in the twentieth century. The strength of the Egyptian surrealists lay squarely in their theoretical underpinning that emphasized non-Western modernism, not as derivative or secondary to the Western modernism, but as a unique experiment in modernity that is worthy of its own investigation.
Born in Alexandria, Egypt, in 1930, Ahmed Morsi is a multitalented artist who seamlessly moves between different genres and modes of creative expression. A brilliant painter, an eloquent poet, and a sharp art and literary critic whose career has spanned more than seven decades, his work has been enriched by the experience of living in three continents. While Morsi's oeuvre is the embodiment of polyphony, a unifying force that defies any singular reading is the surrealist spirit that permeates his work across different mediums. The retrospective Ahmed Morsi: A Dialogic Imagination, held at the Sharjah Art Museum in 2017, captured the artist's restless artistic spirit with a display of the intertextuality and multiplicity of voices through which Morsi expresses his creative talent and endless experimentation. This article references the Sharjah show and offers a survey of Morsi's career, accompanied by a select number of images of his oeuvre from his early days in his native Alexandria to his sojourns in Baghdad and Cairo, and his current practice in New York City, where he has been living since 1974. It also offers a glimpse, in image and in text, of his diverse corpus of literary works, theater set designs, book covers, as well as rare photographs. In tandem with the Sharjah exhibition and the soon-to-be-published catalogue, the author offers a historical assessment and critical appraisal of Morsi's accomplishments that will enable readers to appreciate the artist's remarkable endeavors and experimentations over more than six decades of commitment to creativity in art and literature.
The field of contemporary African and African diaspora art and culture is currently riddled by two paradoxes. First, in Africa and its diaspora, we are witnessing a burgeoning of creative energy and an increasing visibility of artists in the international arts arena. Yet, this energy and visibility has not been matched by a parallel regime of art criticism that lives up to the levels of their work. Second, we find a rising interest in exhibiting and collecting works by contemporary African and diaspora artists among Western museums as well as private and public collections. This growing interest, however, has been taking place within an extremely xenophobic environment of anti-immigration legislation, the closing of borders to the West, and a callous disregard for African and non-Western people's lives. Hence, this essay addresses the need for an innovative framework that is capable of critically unpacking these paradoxes and that offers a critical analysis of contemporary African and African diaspora artistic and cultural production. In doing so, the author asserts the importance of movement, mobility, and transiency in addressing issues of contemporary African artistic and cultural production. This article focuses on the use of the term Afropolitan, which has made its way into African artistic and literary criticism as a crossover from the fashion and popular culture arenas. In thinking about the usefulness of "Afropolitanism," the author revisits the notion of cosmopolitanism in relationship to the entanglement of Africa and the West and its reconfiguration at the intersection of modernity and postcoloniality.
In 1986 Gallery 1199 in New York and the Muse Community Museum in Brooklyn jointly organized a two-part exhibition for "Where We At" Black Women Artists, the collective of African American women artists. The exhibition was an initiative of "Where We At," when its members decided to invite a number of African American male artists to create a collaborative installation exhibition. According to the exhibition organizers, African American artists Charles Abramson and Senga Nengudi, "1 + 1 = 3" is an erotic equation. Male and female work together to create a third thing that has qualities of both yet also has a life of its own. The most interesting aspect of this project was the photographs of couples by the well-known African American photographer and artist Coreen Simpson. Simpson was invited to photograph the couples and the final products of their collaboration. The process of photographing the project becomes a new artistic performance on its own right, a process in which the artists and the photographer entered into a separate dialogue and negotiation of their own. This article reproduces many of Simpson's photographs, along with her accompanying text, "Spirits."
