Vigo is proud to announce the acquisition by Tate Modern of thirty-one works by Ibrahim El-Salahi: thirty works from El-Salahi’s Behind the Mask series, alongside one work from his Pain Relief drawings.
Created between May 2020 and September 2021, the Behind the Mask series is a distinct group of 99 black-and-white drawings, previously exhibited at Cecilia Alemani’s The Milk of Dreams at the 59th Venice Biennale. Predominantly in black ink on the backs of medicine packets, envelopes and small scraps of paper, this series is a continuation of El-Salahi’s current mode of working made famous by his Pain Relief drawings.
El-Salahi’s Pain Relief Drawings are a series of artworks initiated during a period when the Sudanese ‘Godfather of African Modernism’ started to suffer from chronic back pain, leaving him bedridden for long stretches of time. To cope with the physical pain and immobility, El-Salahi began drawing on small pieces of paper, including medicine packets, using a ballpoint pen. The process became a form of mental and physical relief for him, allowing him to channel his suffering into creative expression and giving him the freedom to continue to commit his ideas and meditations to paper. When drawing, he becomes lost in his work and has a temporary respite from his sciatica, chronic back pain and other ailments. These works are created from the comfort of his armchair, the artist refusing to let physical restriction limit his continuing ambition to communicate.
The series has been the subject of many museum shows including Solo Exhibitions at Tegnerforbundet (2022), The Drawing Center (2022-23), and Kunsthalle Zürich (2023) as well as being included in survey exhibitions at The Ashmolean Museum (2018), Hastings Contemporary (2022), Wellington Arch (2022) and Saatchi Gallery (2019), curated by Vigo. Works from the Pain Relief series are now in the Ashmolean Museums collection, The Smithsonian Institute, Baltimore Museum of Art and other institutional collections.
