Influences and contributions

Ishaq's artistic and spiritual influences go back to the works of William Blake and the Zār spiritual rituals of Sudanese women.^[2] These themes of existentialism and the culture of women served as central themes of Ishaq's work in the 1970s and 1980s. These influences distinguished Ishaq from her compatriots, who were inspired largely by notions of Sudan's post-colonial independence and Islamic themes. If Blake and Zar provided personal inspiration, it was as member of the Khartoum School of painting where Ishaq began to be known as an artist. The goal of that movement was a combination of African and Islamic cultural traditions with and Modernism. The Khartoum School's transcultural blending presented a new sense of Sudanese identity, expressed in abstract forms, earthy colors and Arabic calligraphy.^[4] Along Ibrahim El-Salahi, Ishaq is considered to be one of Africa's most prominent painters, and her focus on women's lives has been called a challenge to the traditional male perspective in Sudanese art.^[5]

The Crystalist Movement

In 1978 Ishaq and two of her students, Muhammad Hamid Shaddad and Nayla El Tayib, started the conceptual art movement called Crystalist Group that broke away from traditional practices in the Sudanese art scene.^[4][6] Their intention was to distinguish themselves from the Khartoum School of painting and their traditional male-centred outlook. This new approach in Sudanese painting was marked by a public declaration in the form of the so-called Crystalist Manifesto. First published in Arabic as Al-Bayan al-Kristali, the document presented an artistic vision that attempted to work beyond the Sudanese-Islamic framework of the Khartoum School. Moreover, the Crystalists sought to internationalize their art by embracing an existentialist avant-garde, more akin to European aesthetics.^[1]

The Cosmos is a project of a transparent crystal with no veil and eternal depth. The truth is that the Crystalists’ perception of time and space is different from that of others. The goal of the Crystalists is to bring back to life the language of the crystal and to transform language into something more transparent, in which no word can veil another – no selectivity in language. […] We are living a new life, and this life needs a new language and new poetry.

— The Crystalist Group, Khartoum, 1971

Aesthetically, the Crystalist manifesto understood the cosmos as a "project of a transparent crystal with no veils, but an eternal depth". Crystalist paintings often contain distorted human faces, trapped within clear cubes or spheres, and, as stated in their manifesto, "oppose[d] the trend which calls for skill and craftsmanship as a measure of good work." Inherent in the notions of the Crystalists was the feminist notion of unveiling — a significant facet amid the increasing Islamization of postcolonial Sudan.^[7] Further, they rejected the Hurufiyya movement that used Arabic calligraphy in artworks, positing that letters do not lead to great works of art.^[4]