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Circle Art Gallery is
delighted to be working with Mohamed Otaybi on his first
solo exhibition in Kenya, presenting 25 paintings made
during the last decade.
Otaybi graduated from the Khartoum College of Fine and
Applied Arts and began working as an artist during the
dynamic period of the 1970s in Sudan. He was immersed in
the debates about cultural heritage and Sudanese visual
identity of the Khartoum School at the time. Many of
these debates are still significant in Sudan today, the
combination of Africanism, Islam, Arabism and Sudanese
identity. Long recognised and acclaimed as an
influential figure in Sudanese art, Otaybi’s painterly
language has evolved throughout his career,
consolidating his reputation and strength as a colourist.
Architectural and decorative motifs and calligraphic
forms populate his paintings. Layering hues to create
depth and vibration add to the mythological and
dreamlike quality of his paintings, which reference a
cultural past. Otaybi is also a celebrated cartoonist
and illustrator, and elements of his graphic and
satirical approach often translate into his paintings.
Since the over throw of the Government in 2018 and the
continued protests and an attempted coup in 2021, the
Sudanese people have suffered and demonstrated for
change and artists have been at the forefront of this
activism. Otaybi’s gentle romantic images of life,
nature, music and a heritage that combines Islamic
symbolism and a modern multicultural way of life in
Sudan, speaks of this and resonates with people across
the world. As well as holding regular solo exhibitions
in Khartoum, North Africa and the Arab world from 1970
to the present, he has shown in international group
exhibitions including the Sharjah Biennial, UAE, 1993;
Modernism in Sudanese Art, British Museum, London, 2004;
Sudan: Emergence of Singularities, P21 Gallery, London,
2017 and Khartoum Contemporary, Circle Art Gallery,
Nairobi, 2017. His work features in private and public
collections including the National Museum in Sharjah,
UAE. In 2018, Otaybi was the focus of the article
‘Masters We Need to Master’, Collector Magazine, Art
Africa.
Please email or call Danda for a portfolio of the
exhibition
+254722672938
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