ARTIST Galal Yousif managed to flee Sudan when conflict erupted earlier this year with only a few belongings stuffed into a small backpack. The turmoil and bag, in which he had crammed his passport, two pairs of jeans, five shirts and a car key, is depicted in his painting Man With a Heavy Heart.
He first created the work as a mural in Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia, which he reached after a harrowing journey in June.
Having now found temporary refuge in Kenya, he has recreated it on canvas – a striking image of a man with a hand over his heart, surrounded by large circular red dots resembling gunshot wounds.
A moon shines behind his head and lying on the ground is the backpack – symbolising all that Sudanese people have lost in the eight-month conflict. He had initially packed his car key thinking he would be back home soon.
“I paint my pain,” he tells me in his home-cum-studio in Kenya’s capital, Nairobi.
As an artist, he says his mission is to turn his personal experience into a collective visual narrative, offering a powerful glimpse into the “many people lost” in Sudan and the heavy toil of a “useless war”.
The conflict began in April when two generals in the ruling junta fell out – pitting the army against the formidable paramilitary group known as the Rapid Support Forces (RSF). The fighting has since forced around seven million people from their homes, the UN says.
Yousif heard the first signs of war while working late towards the end of Ramadan in his studio near the presidential palace in Sudan’s capital.
In the early hours of 15 April, he noticed troops massing nearby. Sensing something was about to happen, he decided to drive back to his family’s home in the north of Khartoum – reaching there just before dawn after which the fighting started.
