Hussein Halfawi (Sudanese, born 1969)
Signed ‘H.HALFAWI.

Hussein Halfawi is one among a group of Sudanese artists who immigrated to Nairobi from Khartoum in the mid- to late-nineties. Living and working in Nairobi since then, Halfawi can be considered as much a Kenyan as a Sudanese contemporary artist.

Halfawi creates delicately layered paintings with vivid, dramatic colour combinations which incorporate iconography from northern Sudan and Islamic decorative and calligraphic traditions. This still life represents a departure from the imagery more typical of Halfawi’s work, which often includes references to rustic village life in the Nile valley.

While he was deprived of the opportunity to complete his formal training at the College of Fine and Applied Arts in Khartoum, due to political reasons, Halfawi’s practice has seen him drawing on his rich Sudanese heritage and taking advantage of the relative freedom of expression he found in Kenya. He has exhibited on a regular basis in Kenya and across East Africa, as well as in Germany, France, UK Austria and Canada.