From Omission to Recognition through Sudan Living Cultures

In April 2023 Sudan was plunged into war between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces. The consequences have been catastrophic for civilians, infrastructure and institutions of knowledge.1 In June 2023 the Sudan National Museum in Khartoum was systematically looted and occupied. Satellite imagery has corroborated eyewitness accounts of smashed artefacts and vehicles transporting antiquities out of the capital. UNESCO and international heritage organisations issued calls for protection of heritage, but the damage had already been done.2 Despite the destruction of archives, artefacts and sites central to national and regional memory, Sudanese cultural institutions receive limited and belated attention.3

This context provides the basis for Sudan Living Cultures (SLC), a collaborative research programme at the Petrie Museum of Egyptian and Sudanese Archaeology at University College London (UCL). SLC draws together artists, curators, academics, Sudanese knowledge holders, students and the Sudanese diaspora in the UK to discuss alternative ways of presenting and understanding Sudanese culture and heritage during a time of polycrisis (fig.1). Rather than treating interpretation as a one-way method of formulating display, SLC reframes it as a reparative, relational act that foregrounds Sudanese voices and knowledge.4

The Sudanese collection at the Petrie Museum consists of approximately 4,000 objects, primarily formed through the work and networks of the colonial administrator and former Honorary Curator Anthony Arkell (1898–1980) as well as through the distribution of parts of the Wellcome Collection, London, in 1964.5 The Petrie Museum has nearly two decades’ experience of relationship building with London-based and international Sudanese communities via research projects such as ‘Hidden Histories’, which ran between 2007 and 2008.6 While some of these relationships had lapsed, they were found to have remained dormant – reviving and flourishing again through SLC.

This article adopts a practice-based methodology grounded in curatorial research and takes the SLC programme as a case study. We turn to the programme’s methodologies, its interpretative values, artistic interventions and gatherings to assess its impact and consider how SLC works to reconfigure curatorial practice. Finally, we reflect on the necessity of radical care-based museum practice, arguing for interpretation that centres dignity, relation and justice.

Omission, exclusion and care in museum interpretation

SLC draws on Édouard Glissant’s philosophical text Poetics of Relation of 1990 as a conceptual framework for approaching heritage through connection, plurality and openness.7 For Glissant, ‘relation’ is not only about linking people or places but refers to an ongoing process of understanding the self and society through their entanglements with others. Central to this is his notion of the ‘right to opacity’, which resists the demand that cultures be made fully transparent or legible according to external interpretative frameworks.8

This principle is particularly resonant for SLC, which approaches Sudanese heritage as dynamic and layered. Objects and memories are configured as sites of complexity to reposition heritage as a relational practice grounded in dialogue, multiplicity and respect for what cannot, and need not, be fully known. Museums have long been shaped as much by what they choose to omit as what they include. Traditionally, ‘keepers’ of collections have determined how cultural heritage should be classified and presented. Despite a sector shift in recent decades towards a more collaborative, even activist, approach, inherent structural problems remain.9

Archaeology in Sudan has been fundamentally shaped by European expansion and colonialism, both institutionally and intellectually.10 The archaeologist Claudia Näser has written about the fact that many of the earliest Western archaeologists working in Sudan were Egyptologists who considered their work ‘an adjunct to their activities in Egypt’, and conducted it within complex twentieth-century imperial governance frameworks.11 As a result, Sudanese archaeology is typically displayed in Western museums as an offshoot to ancient Egypt, or situated within ethnological and anthropological displays, thereby imposing an imperially categorised ethnic hierarchy.12

These epistemic hierarchies continue to structure many UK museums. Richard Sandell argues that museums play an active role in shaping social inclusion and exclusion, one that is reinforced by the very nature of museums as institutions. Past efforts such as the Museums Association’s Transformers programme have made inroads to diversifying the UK museum sector and challenge whose stories are told and how they are interpreted.13 But change is slow and requires financial resourcing, which can feed into a feeling of stasis by people whose heritage is being omitted.

Displays in UK museums lay bare the scale of institutional barriers to inclusive interpretation of Sudanese cultural heritage, highlighting impacts of colonial extraction and power. A proportion of the Sudanese material at the Petrie Museum was acquired through the work and professional relationships of Arkell, who was acting governor of the province of Darfur from 1932 to 1937, and later made Honorary Curator of the Petrie Museum from 1948.14 The Petrie Museum’s displays of Sudanese archaeology are not clearly demarcated as distinct from Egyptian material. Sudanese objects are dispersed among Egyptian objects in such a way that their origin could be considered occluded. Like much of the collection, the objects are accompanied by academic, specialist labels, making them difficult for most visitors to interrogate or engage with. Perhaps most telling of all, the museum has only included Sudan in its name since 2019, and the external banner to signpost the museum still does not reflect this change (but is planned for replacement at time of writing). Staff at the museum have acknowledged the impact of these omissions and are making decisions to address it.15 In 2020 the permanent entrance gallery was redesigned to highlight Sudan’s ancient and modern history in the Petrie Museum, including excerpts from a book of poems by the Sudanese poet Al-Saddiq Al-Raddi from his residency at the museum.16

SLC is part of a broader picture of reparative endeavours focusing on Sudan’s heritage across museums and cultural organisations. These include the British Council and British Museum’s multi-partner programme Safeguarding Sudan’s Living Heritage from Conflict and Climate Change; Sudan Memory by the Sudanese Association for Archiving Knowledge and King’s College London; and Nuba Miri (Modern Nubia) at the University of Cambridge. The stakes of this work are heightened by Sudan’s intersecting crises: a protracted war, humanitarian catastrophe and the growing impact of climate breakdown. Heritage organisations must respond not only to the past, but to conditions of planetary and political emergency that impact the present and future.17 Caring for an object therefore means caring for the land, people and practices from which it originates. Care is intrinsically linked to dignity and was asserted as such during a framework planning session by one of the artists, Dina Nur Satti, in determining the core values of SLC. Care is also precious for survival and continuity especially in times of war and displacement, making it foundational to whether heritage endures.

Relational ethics of care in museums describes an approach in which institutions understand their roles not as neutral custodians of objects but as participants in historic and ongoing relationships with people, communities and places. This framework acknowledges that museums are embedded within legacies of colonialism, dispossession and unequal power, and therefore bear ethical responsibilities that extend beyond preservation to processes of acknowledgment, repair and reciprocity Care, in this sense, is a relational practice grounded in attentiveness, accountability and responsiveness to others. It involves recognising that knowledge is co-produced within networks of social relations and that ethical museum practice requires redistributing authority and making space for multiple voices. A relational ethics of care thus reframes museum work as fundamentally concerned with sustaining just relationships through practices that prioritise listening and collaboration.

The Sudan Living Cultures programme and the museum as a site of radical care

This case study examines how interpretative practices were developed, negotiated and evaluated within the SLC programme, particularly in its second phase. The methodology was shaped by the conditions under which the work took place: ongoing conflict in Sudan; Western institutional asymmetries; the museum’s commitment to reparative practice; and the ethical considerations of working with displaced and diasporic communities.

For the second phase of the programme the SLC team established four core values: respect; care and dignity; communality; and conviviality. This values-led methodology was a counter to some of the structural hostility to reparative practice that the team had identified at the museum, such as fellow staff lacking awareness of the conflict in Sudan. The programme team therefore aimed to nurture a place of being and care that was allied, mobile and safe to self-express. The core project values of the Sudan Living Cultures programme are defined as follows:

The relational epistemology outlined in the core values gave the programme a framework for shared understanding. The key questions arising from this include whose knowledge is trusted to define collections’ meaning; who is authorised to interpret collections; and whether lived experience is treated as evidence, allowing interpretative multiplicity. Through curatorial interventions, SLC welcomes embodied forms of knowing through discursive and sensory programmes.

The Petrie Museum is thus reconceived as a space for communal multilayered interpretation and discussions, reviving longstanding critical relationships with Sudanese elders and youth organisations based in London, and connecting with Sudanese academics and cultural professionals from around the world.

The programme in practice

Phase 1: Pilot collaboration

SLC began from a conversation in 2023 between the Petrie Museum’s curator Anna Garnett and engagement manager Sarita Mamseri. Both recognised the importance of spotlighting Sudanese culture in the museum through sustained partnerships. Mamseri reached out to the heritage consultant Eyman Osman, who was a shared contact from London’s supplementary schools’ community. This point of community-based connection facilitated a sense of trust and solidarity. With funding support from the UCL Innovation & Enterprise’s Knowledge Exchange grant, Mamseri presented a brief to Osman based on centring alternative forms of knowledge to offer new interpretation of Sudanese material on display in the Petrie Museum. From this, Osman approached three emerging artists of Sudanese heritage producing critical research-based work. As a programme team, we wanted praxis that challenged dominant museum narratives of Sudan and for this to resonate with the London Sudanese community and museum partners. The artists selected for the pilot were the visual artist Ahmed Akasha from the UK, the digital artist Yasmin Elnour, who works from Bahrain, and the ceramic artist Dina Nur Satti, who is based in the United States.

This first stage of the project operated in a hybrid format due to the temporary closure of the museum for major collections-rehousing activity. This phase consisted of online workshops with the artists examining digital reproductions of Sudanese material with Anna Garnett, Petrie Museum curator, and then cross-referencing the objects with collections in the British Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Following this short research period, each of the three artists were commissioned to create a digital artwork, shown in the museum in November 2024 (fig.2 and 3). Each artist responded to material on display in the museum including ceramic pots, offering tables to worship ancient deities, and an ankh – a carved hieroglyph symbolising eternal life. In addition to their collections research and literature reviews, they drew on transgenerational knowledge from Sudanese community knowledge keepers. Through these conversations, the artists learned of ritual practices linked to these museum objects that form many rites of passage such as weddings and funerals.

The artists’ resulting works comprised mixed media digital collage, traditional Nubian pottery and video performance, displayed on screens in the museum in 2024.18 The digital screens were placed to respond directly to Sudanese material on view, prompting a dialogue between the museum’s essentialised archaeological presentation of historical objects and living cultural heritage as interpreted by the three artists. The showcase launched with a vibrant opening event attended by Sudanese people from all spheres including media, civil society and the creative industries.

Phase 2: International artist research residency

Following the digital showcase the programme team codesigned a research residency, building on research enquiries from Phase 1 and inviting Akasha, Elnour and Nur Satti to return as artists in residence from May to September 2025. The residency was designed to enable thinking and emotional space, in-person group gatherings, in-depth collections research, research visits to UK collections and the opportunity to develop creative practice. The residency was self-led, allowing the artists to carry out initial research from home, and joining bespoke workshops and discussions online. The artists then gathered for a London Summer Gathering in July and August that drew together creatives, curators, researchers and community knowledge holders for a series of encounters and events. The Summer Gathering was formulated as a time of communing and conviviality designed to foreground Sudanese perspectives on heritage, ecology and memory.

The artists visited four UK collections holding Sudanese material culture: the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford, the Wellcome Collection, London, the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge and the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (figs.4–6). Based on prior relationships held within the programme team including Osman, the artists found common allies who could critically and transparently address inherent omissions. Examples of this include Henry Wellcome’s extractive ‘colonial bioprospecting’ in Africa through imperial structures like the Wellcome Tropical Research Laboratories in Khartoum that absorbed and commercialised indigenous knowledge, or the labelling of a Sudanese object from Meroe as Egyptian in Kew’s archives (fig.4).19 These visits were affirming in providing moments of solidarity and recognition, but equally disheartening given the scale of change needed and the reflections shared among the artists and programme team about the personal cost of agitating for change. Forming what Mamseri termed ‘guerilla networks of care’ felt necessary and vital, and, in hindsight, became protective armour to carry the emotional burdens of this work within, against and beyond formal institutional structures.

Each institution the artists visited contributed different resources and curatorial contexts. At the Pitt Rivers Museum, the artists interrogated the politics of representation and object histories (fig.4). At the Wellcome Collection, conversations turned to healing practices, displacement and Sudanese spiritual ecologies. At the Fitzwilliam Museum, the group reflected on the legacies of Sudanese ceramics. At Kew, the focus was on botanical knowledge and seed sovereignty (figs.5 and 6). And at the Petrie Museum, the group engaged with the Sudanese archaeological collection and associated archives. The objects raised issues of the racialised anti-African bias inherent across archaeological collections and the leading figures behind them, including Robert Pitt Rivers, Henry Wellcome, Flinders Petrie and Anthony Arkell. At each of these sites, many moments of silence hung over the artists as the institutional omission and violence was felt so acutely. Time was required for the artists to digest the scale of this and articulate their emotions to decide how they would visually respond. The sense of urgency to present culturally reflective interpretations and readdress this bias produced counter-purifying moments.

One of the primary outcomes of the research residency was the exhibition The Land Carries, on view at the Petrie Museum from November 2025 to September 2026.20 The display featured work produced on the residency, including mixed media collages based on archive material by Akasha in his series Excavating Futures 2025 (fig.7); Nur Satti’s Merissa 2025, a traditional handmade beer vessel referencing ancient Nubian rituals accompanied by a digital interactive storytelling experience (fig.8); and Beyond the Kandake 2025, a series of four short films by Elnour (fig.9). Created with generative AI, Elnour’s films revive ancient women’s place in history through specific objects. The Land Carries offered the opportunity for Sudanese people to respond to the Sudanese artwork on show through visitor surveys, comment boards and interactions with museum staff. The display connected, questioned and celebrated different aspects of Sudan’s history and culture as interpreted by Sudanese artists, and in turn prompted feelings of wonder, reaffirmation, historical and present-day loss, but also immense pride. The ongoing feedback specifically from self-identifying Sudanese visitors will inform activities for the SLC’s third phase, working towards collection redisplay and interpretation.

Imagined as a collective endeavour of multidisciplinary practices, the programme required examination of curatorial and engagement practice, and equitable knowledge production. SLC is centred around the work of Akasha, Nur Satti and Elnour, not as interpreters of objects but as interlocutors and knowledge holders. Each brought a distinct approach to reinterpreting museum collections through lived experience and transgenerational knowledge.

While the programme’s outputs – talks, roundtables, shared meals, inter-institutional research visits and showcase displays – are familiar formats for public engagement, the dialogic processes that produced them are particular to this project. The programme team and the artists sought to create new multilayered understandings of the collection and Sudanese heritage from informal conversation circles. These non-hierarchical conversations made space for everyone to contribute their thoughts and co-develop ideas that informed alternative ways of viewing objects in relation to each other. The programme team and artists also reflected on what should be made transparent through public offerings, and for whom – making the events primarily available to the Sudanese diaspora – and which new knowledges should be consciously opaque, even within sub-groups of the SLC programme team (i.e. non-Sudanese), recognising that opacities can coexist and converge.21 These conversation circles sought to democratise knowledges in a spirit of careful consideration and respect for who was offering knowledge typically marginalised by the institution. This activity of ‘curatorialization’ as defined by the curator Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung encompasses layers and multi-positions of care for each other’s holistic wellbeing but especially for the artists.22 Such ways of being require complex levels of aligned planning and empathy.

SLC proposes a framework for interpretation rooted in African relational philosophies, specifically the philosophy of ubuntu, which understands identity as constituted through community. SLC reframes the museum as a space of gathering rather than display, and of co-creation rather than curation (fig.9). This approach seeks to dismantle the extractive logics through which African objects have been collected, classified and exhibited. Instead, SLC centres durational relationships, and crafted values of care and dignity, communality, respect and conviviality.

Listening and evaluating

The impact of SLC continues to be keenly expressed and felt – both joyfully and critically. Ongoing external qualitative evaluation of the artist research residency as well as the exhibition The Land Carries is being carried out. Through live and post-event feedback, interviews, observation and exhibition comments cards, the evaluation considers the experiences of the artists, Sudanese students, museum visitor services staff, event participants and general visitors. The museum practitioner, educator and artist Chris Webb distilled conversations about the artist residency into SLC’s four core values. Below we share some findings as of summer 2026 with direct quotes from participants; an evaluation report by Webb is forthcoming.

Reclaiming and recentring Sudanese voices and histories

Sudanese culture is situated through SLC as historically rich, intellectually significant and inseparable from discussions of ancient cultures. The programme has challenged the dominance of Western and Egyptian narratives, revealing for one participant how Sudanese histories have been ‘buried, hidden or not really talked about’. For both Sudanese and non-Sudanese audiences, visitors noted that the works by contemporary artists broadened their historical understanding and repositioned Sudan as central, rather than peripheral, to human history. Visitors also commented that seeing contemporary Sudanese artistic responses alongside ancient artefacts reframed the collection as living rather than static or purely archaeological.

Empowerment, pride and healing for Sudanese audiences

Participants, including the artists, commented on the emotional and psychological impact of the project, noting that the project evokes a deep sense of pride and connection to art, craftsmanship and indigenous knowledge. This was described as ‘dignified’ and ‘healing’, particularly because Sudanese people are telling their own stories as opposed to being spoken for. The focus on everyday objects – mirrors, beer jars, kohl makeup, hair practices – created an intimate connection across time and affirmed Sudanese cultural continuity and existence despite current erasure and conflict.

Activating the collection through contemporary arts practice

Feedback indicates that the artistic interventions gave the collections new or renewed meaning and made it more accessible. Participants reported that the artists’ work prevents artefacts from becoming ‘relics, dead, not being activated’ and that contemporary practices translate otherwise archaeological material into forms that connect with the public. In particular, comments reported value in seeing and hearing how the artists navigated fragmented archives, misinformation and gaps in knowledge as part of their creative process.

Expanding what counts as ‘research’ or knowledge

For several attendees, the exhibition and associated events reframed their understanding of research itself. Research and ways of knowing in this context were recognised as plural, not only scientific or part of the ‘academy’, but also oral, artistic, embodied and inherited. This was particularly referenced by participants from scientific and formal design backgrounds who had not encountered these approaches in their own work. They felt that the artists’ methodologies demonstrate how knowledge can be carried through materials, practices and storytelling, legitimising alternative epistemologies and positioning artistic practice as valid, meaningful and rigorous research.

Humanising ancient history through everyday life

A strong theme across the feedback is the importance of ordinary, domestic objects – this focus on daily rituals allowed participants to recognise themselves in the past (fig.11). This visibility was felt to counter colonial collecting practices that ‘other’ or prioritise spectacle over lived experience. Visitors described this as profoundly moving, grounding history in familiarity, with the impact that history became relational and human, cultivating empathy rather than remote distance.

Fostering cross-cultural understanding and advocacy

Sudanese and non-Sudanese participants alike noted how the programme deepened their engagement with Sudanese cultural loss. Encounters with the exhibition created a clearer sense of what is at stake and in need of protecting:

Visitors noted that the programme prompted new and repeat visits to the Petrie Museum, as well as new and enhanced curiosity about Sudan – the show and associated programming motivated visitors to research further and find out more for themselves. It is evident that the focus on Sudan’s living heritage can build understanding that translates into long-term public engagement and advocacy.

Modelling ethical, values-led museum practice

Finally, feedback demonstrates the importance of the way in which the programme was carried out, not just what was presented. Mutual respect, love, compassion and care are named explicitly as important when navigating colonial legacies. In these comments, it was seen as crucial that the values were genuine and not performative – feedback from events shows that this was evident when visitors encountered staff and artists directly, further emphasising the relational nature of this work and its impact on success. Several comments describe the project as ‘exemplary’ and something that ‘there is no going back from’. The programme has set a benchmark for how the Petrie Museum and other institutions can work collaboratively and ethically with associated communities of contested heritage.

Reflections

SLC has held a sometimes precarious balance between institutional resistance and cultural diplomacy. The Petrie Museum is part of University College London and while there are multiple departments with systems intended to assist, somehow these systems become barriers. From issues of payments for daily expenses and enabling access to university libraries to changing the banner to reflect the current name of the museum, there have been many challenges. However, the resulting experiences for the artists have been positive. Internal and external advocacy of the programme against the backdrop of conflict in Sudan has been recognised by varying spheres of influence in civil society, academia, the UK government and importantly among London’s Sudanese community. Throughout, the programme has sought to centre Sudanese voices, in all their heterogeneity: Indigenous, pre-Islamic knowledge, Muslim beliefs and traditions and contemporary cultural experiences of Sudanese people in the UK and abroad. The range of discursive, communal and convivial activity that took place – live-streamed lectures from displaced archaeology and heritage professionals in Cairo, a pre-event iftar and prayer with students during Ramadan and world café gatherings on reclaiming Sudanese heritage – were sustained by Sudanese voices.

The boundaries of this approach have been tested through the artworks. There were concerns by Dina Nur Satti about how her work Merissa, a traditional Nubian beer vessel referencing pre-Islamic cultural practices, would be received by Sudanese audiences. The conscious and creative use of generative AI by Elnour in Beyond the Kandake became about grappling with systemically Eurocentric algorithms for the digital creation of African women (fig.12). The intent here has somewhat been overshadowed by visitors’ overriding rejection of AI raising wider questions about legitimacy of use. Nonetheless, the artists have clear and articulated voices about their works and the creative mediums used to convey this.

Navigating project decisions in a team of different backgrounds, experiences and perspectives in a clear power dynamic is complex, especially in a university museum with a world class collection championed by many authoritative voices. Creating a group dynamic that allows for closeness, vulnerability, apartness and critical questions is challenging. There were times when our collective values came into competition with individual hopes. The shared decision to refuse an opportunity that excluded one member of the group based on a humanitarian stance was tough. But recognising the power of refusal as an act of solidarity was liberating, and building a collective view and consensus became critical in building trust and ethical working practice.

As some relationships evolve away from the programme and new ones form, the importance of establishing allied work groups in lieu of single museum staff member, researcher or artist roles is clear. There is greater support against structural hostilities such as inflexible systems and individual burden-bearing and more opportunities for moments of collective wonder, discovery, advocacy and change.

Conclusion

Sudan Living Cultures continues the transformation of the Petrie Museum from a site of inherited colonial knowledge into a space of active dialogue, care and cultural continuity. The approach empowers Sudanese voices, reanimates collections, expands definitions of research and creates human connections across time. At a moment of global and national crisis for Sudan, the programme is timely: it offers pride, healing and a vision for how cultural institutions can move forward with integrity and empathy.

Radical care must form the basis of meaningful museum interpretation in contexts of violence, postcolonial inequity and climate rupture. Sudan Living Cultures offers a relational model of how care can be enacted through community-led interpretation, artistic interventions, multiscale gatherings, digital innovation and trans-institutional solidarity. When heritage is under siege, whether by war, climate collapse or institutional silence, museums must move beyond representation and embrace responsibility.

Sudan Living Cultures provides a set of values, methods and questions that can guide institutions seeking to reimagine themselves: What does it mean to build curatorial practices grounded in trust, reciprocity and community dignity? What can it look like to treat archives as living, and collections as co-authored? And how might we turn care from a sentiment into a structure? The future of interpretation lies not in the accumulation of new content but in the transformation of relationships. Through radical care, we can begin to redress omission, repair epistemic harm and root our practices in justice.