Ahmed Umar: Glowing Phalanges

The Norwegian-Sudanese artist Ahmed Umar highlights questions regarding identity, religion, and cultural values through several modes of artistic expression. He uses personal experiences as tools to convey narratives not only about suppression and alienation, but also about liberation and owning one’s own history. Umar works within a broad range of media—sculpture, textiles, ceramics, graphics, jewelry, photography and performance—and with materials and techniques that are as multi-faceted as the stories they relate.

The starting point for the exhibition is the artist’s background and childhood, growing up between two denominations of Islam and their different religious practices. Glowing Phalanges reflects a journey between faith and doubt, freedom and restriction. Umar grew up in Sudan and Saudi Arabia, with a tradition of using prayer beads and amulets as means of protection. In the exhibition, 99 sculptural prayer beads in a variety of materials and formats are presented, each one corresponding to a personal prayer. The sculptures are made of materials derived from commercial souvenir objects produced in African and Asian countries, which Umar has collected over the years. The souvenirs, often caricaturized human and animal figures, are made of materials such as hardwood, bone, teeth, skin and ebony, and their import into Norway and Europe, historically and continuing today, has been mostly driven by missionary activity and tourism. This enterprise has led to the depletion of natural resources and restriction of local craftspeople’s creative freedom. For this exhibition, the artist has also incorporated organic material from Norway, including reindeer horn and the 60-year-old skeleton of a whale excavated from the ocean floor, as an indication of the exploitation of natural resources that occurs here.

Umar deconstructs these generic objects and recombines them in new ways, meticulously refinishing each fragment and reassembling them as a whole. He literally picks apart the constructed image of “the exotic” so as to breathe new life into the materials, instilling in them his own story. The process results in tactile and sensual objects, each with a distinct personality. The last of the 99 prayer beads takes the form of a monumental, appliquéd tapestry that spans the entire length of the windows in one of the twin skylight halls.

All of the works in the exhibition are held by casts of the artist’s right hand. The various gestures of these hands resemble motions made while praying, underscoring how the hand can potentially be subject to political and religious control. And yet it also evokes creative power and the ability to rebel and protest—the hand can also seize control back for itself.

The exhibition is supported by the Arts Council Norway and KiN - Art Centers in Norway.

About the artist
Ahmed Umar (b. 1988, Sudan) is a cross-disciplinary artist living and working in Oslo. He received his MFA degree in medium- and material-based art from the Oslo National Academy of the Arts in 2016. His works have been exhibited at a number of institutions in Norway, and he was a participant in the 22nd Biennale of Sydney. Umar’s works are in the permanent collections of the National Museum, Drammens Museum and City of Oslo Art Collection. In 2023, in addition to this solo exhibition at Kunstnernes Hus, Umar’s work will be on view at Trondheim Kunstmuseum in connection with his nomination for the Lorck Schive Kunstpris. 

Glowing Phalanges is a continuation of the artist’s ongoing and continually evolving project, Forbidden Prayers, which has been previously shown at KRAFT in Bergen, Sandefjord Art Association and Vestfossen Kunstlaboratorium. Umar plans to make a total of 1000 sculptural prayer beads.