Mohamed Abdella Otaybi: The Lost Paradise

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.

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. In 2018, Otaybi was the focus of the article ‘Masters We Need to Master’, Collector Magazine, Art Africa.