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Ibrahim El-Salahi Prison Notebook 1976

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The Sudanese artist Ibrahim El-Salahi was arrested in September 1975 and held without trial for six months in Khartoum's notorious Kober Prison, wrongfully accused of involvement in an anti-government coup. In the weeks of house arrest that followed his release, the pioneering modernist artist, intellectual, and teacher produced his Prison Notebook. Modest in scale but immeasurable in impact, this sketchbook of masterful pen-and-ink drawings and virtuoso prose and poetry in Arabic served both to exorcise and document his experience behind bars.

Publication excerpt from Ibrahim El-Salahi, Prison Notebook, 1976.
Medium
Notebook with thirty-eight ink on paper drawings
Dimensions
page (each approx.): 11 1/4 × 6 3/4" (28.7 × 17 cm); overall (closed): 11 1/4 × 7 1/8 × 1 1/8" (28.7 × 18.1 × 2.9 cm)
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
Object number
319.2017.1-35
Copyright
© 2024 Ibrahim El-Salahi / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / DACS, London
Type
Associated Work
Department
Drawings and Prints

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