Kamala Ibrahim Ishaq

• Native Name — كمالا إبراهيم اسحق • Born — 1939 • Birthplace — Omdurman, Sudan • Education — College of Fine and Applied Art, Sudan University of Science and Technology, • Alma Mater — Royal College of Art, London • Known for — Painter • Style — Contemporary Art • Movement — African Modernism, Crystalist Movement

Ishaq was born in Omdurman and studied from 1959 to 1963 at the College of Fine and Applied Art of the Khartoum Technical Institute that later became the Sudan University of Science and Technology (SUST) in Khartoum. Further to this, she pursued her postgraduate studies in painting, illustration and lithography at the Royal College of Art in London between 1964 and 1969. After her stay in London, she returned to teach at her former college and also became dean of this art school.

In 1978 Ishaq and two of her students, Muhammad Hamid Shaddad and Nayla El Tayib, started the conceptual art movement called Crystalist Group that broke away from traditional practices in the Sudanese art scene. Their intention was to distinguish themselves from the Khartoum School of painting and their traditional male-centred outlook. This new approach in Sudanese painting was marked by a public declaration in the form of the so-called Crystalist Manifesto. First published in Arabic as Al-Bayan al-Kristali, the document presented an artistic vision that attempted to work beyond the Sudanese-Islamic framework of the Khartoum School. Moreover, the Crystalists sought to internationalize their art by embracing an existentialist avant-garde, more akin to European aesthetics. Aesthetically, the Crystalist manifesto understood the cosmos as a "project of a transparent crystal with no veils, but an eternal depth". Crystalist paintings often contain distorted human faces, trapped within clear cubes or spheres, and, as stated in their manifesto, "oppose[d] the trend which calls for skill and craftsmanship as a measure of good work." Inherent in the notions of the Crystalists was the feminist notion of unveiling — a significant facet amid the increasing Islamization of postcolonial Sudan. Further, they rejected the Hurufiyya movement that used Arabic calligraphy in artworks, positing that letters do not lead to great works of art.

Along with other African artists, Ishaq's paintings have been shown at Saatchi Gallery in London in the exhibition titled Forests and Spirits: Figurative Art from the Khartoum School from September to November 2018, and one of her works from this exhibition was sold by auction house Sotheby's in London in 2020. In October 2022, Serpentine South Gallery in London opened a retrospective exhibition covering works since her early years until the present. Major exhibitions include: • Camden Arts Centre, London, 1970 • National Museum of Women in Art, Washington, DC, 1994 • Sharjah Art Museum, UAE, 1995 • Whitechapel Gallery, London, 1995 • Breaking the veils: Women artists from the Islamic world, Royal Society of Fine Arts, Jordan, 2002 • Shibrain Art Centre, Khartoum, 2014 • Institut français, Khartoum, 2015 • Women in Crystal Cubes, Sharjah Art Foundation, 2016 • Serpentine South Gallery, London, 2022–23