Klozium Studios

A retired singer from northern Sudan, Mona, burdened by guilt for covering up a man's death, hires his southern widow, Julia, as her maid. Unable to confess her role in the tragedy, she hopes to move forward, but the country's growing unrest threatens to reveal her secret.

In 1983, Black journalist Carter arrives in Khartoum on a mission to revive a struggling newspaper. There, he reunites with Nouri, an old friend he hasn’t seen in 10 years, now an idealistic doctor who serves as an ideological counterpoint to the jaded reporter. Things grow complicated when Carter falls for Fatin, his newly hired translator, unaware that she is Nouri’s ex-wife. The fragile romance collides with the sudden weight of politics when Sharia law is imposed across Sudan, and Nouri finds himself facing the death sentence when he refuses a court order to amputate a thief’s hand.

This artist profile of Kamala Ibrahim Ishag was commissioned by the Serpentine Galleries to accompany an exhibition titled "Kamala Ibrahim Ishag: States of Oneness," on display at the Serpentine South Gallery on October 7, 2022-January 29, 2023 to celebrate the pioneering Sudanese artist Kamala Ibrahim Ishag, whose work intertwines the earthly and the spiritual through an understanding of our connections with the natural world. With a career spanning over sixty years, Kamala Ibrahim Ishag (b.1939) is a defining figure of modern and contemporary art. Her widely recognised paintings, where often human and plant forms intertwine, use a distinctive palette rooted in the colours of the sun, sand and sky and contemplate the cyclical flow of life and the intangible aspects of women’s lives in Sudan.