In my Garment there is nothing but God: recent work by Ibrahim el Salahi.

Ibrahim el Salahi was born in the Sudan in 1930, and is widely recognized as one of the progenitors of modern painting in that country. (1) He studied in Khartoum at the School of Design Gordon Memorial College, in London at the Slade School, and then returned to the Sudan to teach. (2) Briefly imprisoned under Nimeiri in 1975, el Salahi left the Sudan upon his release and he has since been in self-imposed exile in Qatar and Oxford, England.

Salah Hassan has divided el Salahi's oeuvre into three periods--an early period (late 1950s-1970s) characterized by muted, earthy tones and a linear compositional style; a second period (late 1970s) with more vibrant colors and "abstract human and animal-like figures rendered in geometric design"; and a third phase (late 1970s to present) in which works are mainly in black and white (Hassan 1998:31-2). This discussion of the artist's work, however, addresses currents that run through these divisions. Specifically, el Salahi's own narration of his career trajectory reveals a consistent interest in negotiating and bridging the distance between his body and his work. He considers the process of coming to the canvas or paper as the meeting of two bodies and subjectivities--his own and the canvas's--and the work then grows from a conversation (and sometimes an argument) between the two. This negotiation takes place throughout his career at several levels--through prayer and meditation, media, compositional construction, and imagery. Further, el Salahi's attempts to link his own body (as a creator) to the work (as a creation) shift slowly over time from engagement with the exterior, physical body to representations of an interior, spiritual body. This transformation in turn mirrors his ongoing use of prayer and meditation as a means to bring himself closer to God.

Rather than limit art historical engagement to the formal development of el Salahi's works, this analysis of his oeuvre draws upon embodied models that are more often applied to the study of performance arts in Africa, such as masquerades (see, for example, Bourdieu 1977 and Connerton 1989). The use of such models widens the scope of analysis and allows us to more thoroughly consider the artist's physical experience of creation in both the phenomenological and spiritual sense. Additional meaning is drawn from the artist's implicit bodily performances over time. Within such a framework, the borders of what constitutes the "work" expand, and the drawings and paintings themselves are recast as fragments of a broader, equally significant, and ongoing embodied experience.

Prayer

El Salahi is a Muslim of a Sufi sect and notes that he prays five times a day and will often pray again before he starts to draw or paint. (3) This has been true throughout his life, except for a brief period when he was enrolled in a British school in the Sudan. El Salahi's definition of prayer and his discussion of its role in his work is significant. In one interview, he described the process of washing, preparing his body before prayer, the motions he goes through as he prays which distract him from his surroundings, the words he speaks, and what they mean. He then added:

   I find that when I come to paint I
   do exactly the same. I always
   wash. I have to come clean outside
   which leads to cleanliness within.
   And then I work. So for me, and
   for us as Muslims, any action we
   do is supposed to be in the name
   of Allah. (4)

Like many Sufis, el Salahi sees prayer as a way to establish and maintain a direct connection between creator and created. It is a way to eliminate the separation between the divine and the human in order to achieve human perfection. For a Muslim, el Salahi noted, Paradise is unity with the creator, the return of the particle to the whole, and Hell is the opposite--the inability to unite with the creator. To sum up the goal of prayer, he invoked the proverb, "In my garment there is nothing but God"--that is, if one achieves this union with God, there will be a negation of self, of the physical body (see Stoddart 1986:62-3).

Prayer is essential to el Salahi's creative process because he realizes the work does not originate with him, it goes through him to the canvas from elsewhere: (5)

   [M]any times I have said this to
   people--I realize the work comes
   through me. And I am not the originator.
   It is originated by someone
   else--which is Allah, which is my
   God. And I have little bits. Sometimes
   the window opens and I can
   see things. I can follow them if I am
   clean, if I am not the window is
   closed and I don't see it ... (6)

Therefore it is important to keep his mind and body--conceived of here as a channel--open and clean, an idea that becomes increasingly significant in relation to his more recent work. El Salahi's emphasis on maintaining a close connection between Allah and himself through prayer is critical to his work. Throughout his career he tries through various means to extend this idea to his work and create a link between his body and the works he creates.

Media

One of el Salahi's earliest efforts to bridge the distance between his own body and the canvas was through the use of a medium he seems to have invented (Fig. 1). (7) In these early works from the 1960s, he first put a heavy layer of oil paint mixed with enamel paint and titanium white powder on the canvas, then covered this first thick layer with a thin, earth-toned varnish, followed by another thin layer of enamel paint. The top layer dried quickly, but the oil, enamel, and powder mixture beneath remained moist and malleable for a bit longer. He then went back in with his hands and manipulated (he calls it "tickling") the surface of the canvas, pushing the pigments around to create a sense of deep texture. As he put it, the topmost layer of paint dries and wrinkles like "an old person's skin." (8) As the works dried and aged over time, those wrinkles deepened further.

[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]

When el Salahi looks back on this period he often talks about how dense the imagery was in the pieces he created in other media, such as his line drawings (Fig. 2). He notes that to his eyes now, the compositions of his early line drawings seem heavily worked, crowded, and slightly overdetermined. As he put it, he was desperately trying to control the unfolding image (without success in some cases, in his opinion).

   It was almost like a fever [when I
   was younger] and I had so many
   ideas coming through me and I had
   to put them through. So the picture
   plane was covered, with objects,
   with figures, with shapes, near and
   far, big and small, it was packed. It
   was really overcrowded. There was
   no space---you cannot travel through
   it easily ... lots of my old work is
   definitely crowded. (9)

[FIGURE 2 OMITTED]

El Salahi's choice--or invention--of the enamel and oil media during this period reflects his urge to control this avalanche of imagery by physically connecting with the work. In these early works, he uses the enamel and oil media to physically connect his body and mind to the canvas. He literally leaves traces of his body on the canvas through touch. The paintings are as worked as the dense line drawings, not through graphic imagery, but through extensive touch and manipulation. He redirects the energy of the crowded, detailed drawings through somatic intervention and an excess of materiality.

During my research on uli painting, women's body and mural painting in southeastern Nigeria, I learned to paint murals in earth pigments on clay walls. As el Salahi described his oil and enamel medium, I saw many connections between his descriptions of this media and my own work. When you paint with your hands, the directness of the experience and the physical pleasure often compete with and sometimes eclipse the mental exercise of organizing and planning the composition. El Salahi's enamel and oil canvases from the early 1960s seethe with the energy of this tense interplay between the physical and the mental. His interest in the pleasure of touch and bodily sensation (both his own body and the canvas as a body) outweighs interest in form, composition, or line. In short, bodily sensations drive this project, not necessarily an interest in the end product's visual aspects.

Roland Barthes's meditations on Cy Twombly's drawings resonate with and illuminate el Salahi's early oil and enamel canvases. Barthes suggests that, "We are not asked to see, to conceive, to savor [Twombly's] product, but to review, to identify, and, so to speak, to 'enjoy' the movement which has ended up here" (1958:164). He notes that in certain passages in Twombly's drawings, we are aware that his body is "close to canvas, not by projection but ... by contact" (ibid., p. 179). Barthes suggests that in certain styles of painting, the artist's body is felt (ibid., p. 171)--this is the case in these works by el Salahi. The work itself is not a visual end but a point of memory for the fleeting pleasure of touch, of pure bodily sensation. The artist's body is felt here.

Composition: Nucleus to Finished Work

In the fall of 1975, el Salahi was incarcerated in the Sudan after he was accused of anti-government activities during General Nimeiri's military dictatorship. He was held for six months and eight days. Prisoners could be thrown into solitary confinement if they were discovered with paper, so el Salahi created drawings on tiny slips of paper in secret during this period. He started with what he called the nucleus, a founding image of sorts, and then created other separate but related works that grew from that initial image (Fig. 3). He continued to work with this idea on a larger scale after he was released from prison and went into self-imposed exile. Each of these composite works has a nucleus, a kernel image, from which the rest of the work grew. Within each work, every section functions within the whole but is framed separately and can also stand alone. (10) In fact, el Salahi has published single sections from these composite images as stand-alone images.

[FIGURE 3 OMITTED]

When el Salahi talks about these composite images, he speaks of the work as a living entity. The nucleus speaks and tells him how to build the rest of the work. The nucleus, or the "heart" as he once called it--which locates agency and selfhood in the heart, not the head--tells him if there is more to be added on the top, left, sides, and so forth. In short, the "nucleus-as-heart" presages the rest of the work--it directs the construction of its own body. These works are so alive, so active for el Salahi that he feels compelled to frame the individual sections when they are completed in order to silence and control them, to quiet their demanding voices. (11)

This idea of the work as a living entity with its own subjectivity continues to the present. When he talks about his more recent work, he uses similar language:

   Now I listen to the picture ... I put
   my ears to it, and I put my heart to
   it and it tells me, when it's enough,
   it's enough. Sometimes I make a
   very simple thing and it says to me,
   "Leave me alone, I don't want anymore
   of you, just go away somewhere
   else." And I leave it and I
   find it's fine. Sometimes it will sort
   of beckon for me as if to say, "Come
   here, I need a little bit more here." I
   put a little bit more there and that's
   it. I find it works. (12)

The philosophy behind el Salahi's nucleus-driven compositions also links back to his idea of prayer as a way to return the particle to the whole, to unite himself, his body, with his creator, and thus a greater whole. This relationship between the particle and the whole is echoed in these compositions. The labor-intensive graphic detail work in his composite work again suggests the artist's body, not through actual physical contact as with the oil and enamel works, but through extended concentration and proximity. (13)

The sense of independent life within the nucleus-driven work, of the work as something active, with its own body and subjectivity that meets the artist and instructs him, also comes through in el Salahi's discussion of his well-documented study of calligraphy, a study that underpins most of his career.

Imagery: Calligraphy, the Haraz Tree, and Experimentation With Purely Linear Style

El Salahi's study of calligraphy is more profound than just deep formal analysis. Like the nucleus-driven compositions, calligraphy is discussed as something that is alive and active. His deep analysis over time brought the calligraphy to life:

   I took the calligraphy itself and
   took away the meaning from it ...
   Then I had to break the forms of the letters
   themselves and try to see the bones
   of the letters ... starting to break [the
   letters] and reorganizing them in a
   different shape. It then became the
   beginning of a new pictorial idiom
   from which I started creating my
   pictures. (14)

When he talks about the "bones" of the letters, he breathes life into the calligraphic lines and the work. In 1992 he commented that as he studied calligraphy he felt he had "broken the symbol. Characters which had evolved for centuries suddenly came to life and began roaming around ... I got very frightened sometimes" (Whitman 1992:1562). The calligraphic forms are, for the artist, abstract references to animated forms, each with their own histories and subjectivities. El Salahi's work was and is a negotiation with those subjectivities, the voices of calligraphy:

   [S]ometimes I even had things like
   ghosts come to me out of the written
   letter ... the letters themselves, they
   began to talk to you ... but as I said
   I am still leaning my back against
   calligraphy because I find it is something
   which is very, very stable, it's
   almost like trees growing. [Looks
   outside the window to the tree in the
   garden] When I see trees growing,
   you can see the calligraphic shape
   in them. A bit of it is everywhere
   around us, and that's something you
   can really rest against. (15)

Haraz and Present Linear Style

   See unity, utter unity, know unity,
   In this is to be summarized the
   trunk and branches of
   the tree of faith (imam)
   --Master Sufi Mahmud Shabistari
   (Nasr 1990:191).

The link el Salahi sees between trees and calligraphy brings us to his recent series of images of trees (Figs. 4-11). In early 2000, el Salahi began thinking about a special tree called Haraz (Faidherbia albida), which grows along the banks of the Nile in the Sudan. He says of this period:

   It has been some time now, since
   I think the year 2000, that the idea
   came to me about this tree called
   Haraz ... it's a huge tree with a very,
   very soft pulp--and there is a legend
   around it. They say that Haraz
   tree fought against the rain. Because
   during the rainy season and the
   flooding of the Nile, it is completely
   dry, with dry leaves, nothing at all
   ... then during the drought it comes
   out with blooms and with fruit and
   everything. This is a definitive statement.
   Like saying "I am me! I am an
   individual! I do not follow what everyone
   is doing! ... When everyone
   is going to be green let them be
   green, I am not." It's individuality.
   I love that very much ... (16)

There are two components to el Salahi's mediation on the Haraz tree. The idea that the tree represents going against larger trends relates to el Salahi's concept of artistic identity. He sees the Haraz tree, which goes against larger trends, as a metaphor for artistic identity within the context of the early twenty-first century art market. Young, non-Western artists, he feels, tire of continually trying to convince people that they are individuals, that they are bringing something new to the table and are making a contribution. Too often, he notes, he sees young artists simply join larger art market trends so their work will be shown and sold. They allow themselves to be framed as "African artists," "Sudanese artists," or "Nigerian artists" rather than insist that their work be dealt with as the expression of an individual. The issue is, in fact, more complex than this--it is actually a struggle between many markets. El Salahi himself recalled, for example, that one of the most satisfying moments of his career was when his work was exhibited and well received in the Sudan. For him this acceptance meant that his work relates to Sudanese people, which is very important to him. So while there is this declared resistance to being identified and therefore limited by ethnic or geographic frameworks, there is also a sense of artists trying to negotiate and frame themselves as artists at three levels--for themselves, against and within a place of origin, and also within a broader international market.

The other aspect of el Salahi's meditation on this tree focuses on it as a channel that links heaven and earth--its roots reach down deep into the earth in search of water, while its branches extend up to the heavens. El Salahi's meditation on this tree from 2000 to the present brings his earlier work's oblique references to the connection between the body of the creator and that of the created to attempts at direct representation of this concept. The focus becomes the use of an evolving, increasingly abstract image of the Haraz tree, which links heaven and earth, as an iconic representation of the spiritual body, the Divine in the body, and the body-as-channel. These images, all titled "The Tree," are simultaneously self-portraits and generalized representations of the spiritual body. (17)

At the beginning of this period, the tree remains recognizable (Fig. 4). El Salahi divides the picture plane into three loosely defined zones, the branches and crown of the tree at the top, the earth below, and the trunk linking the two with a series of parallel, vertical lines. His palette is vibrant, rich with bold colors that are balanced by the attention he gives to delicate hatched lines drawn freehand. A thicket of parallel lines spring up from the crown of the tree, and this verticality is then compressed on either side with narrow clusters of horizontal lines. The tight spacing and insistent repetition of these lines once again give us a sense of the artist's body close to the image.

[FIGURE 4 OMITTED]

As the tree develops, the palette remains vibrant but there is a greater sense of geometry (Fig. 5). He opposes the upper and lower zones of the image, heaven and earth, by changing the parallel lines' direction and color. At the bottom of the image, black horizontal lines meet at the center and are drawn into a channel at the base of the tree, only to meet abruptly with an empty sliver of clean white paper at the center of the composition. The top of this tree is given over to U-shaped structures that eventually become the focus of his meditation. In this work, there is an overall sense of organic line slowly giving way to a more rigid geometry.

[FIGURE 5 OMITTED]

The central channel that appears in this work is further emphasized in later work, and alludes to his ongoing meditation on this tree as a body metaphor, a link between the heavens of the creator and earth, the created (Fig. 6). El Salahi slowly breaks the image down and isolates the essential parts: The horizontal lines of the earth change direction as they meet at the center, rise vertically to the heavens, then turn again at the top and run roughly parallel with the lines at the bottom. This work, however, is still drawn freehand.

[FIGURE 6 OMITTED]

When el Salahi pared the work down even further, he began to use a ruler. It was clear that the introduction of this tool was significant, exhilarating, and at the same time unsettling. (18) The first representation of the Haraz tree el Salahi made with a ruler included a narrow band of smaller, more detailed freehand patterning at the center of the circle--the physical body of the artist is still felt in this passage (Fig. 7). As he developed the image, he experimented with the elimination of color, limiting his palette to India ink on white paper (Fig. 8). The lines are once again drawn with a ruler, but he has gone back in with his hands and a nib to smudge the lines. This smudging evokes his earlier canvases in oil and enamel--once again el Salahi works to bridge the distance between creator and created by physically connecting with his creation. This smudging also reflects some of his initial discomfort with the harshness of lines he made using the ruler.

[FIGURES 7-8 OMITTED]

However, as el Salahi continued with this theme, he clearly became more comfortable with his methods (Fig. 9). He notes that the series of images he created is much simpler than his earlier work:

   I don't know if it has to do with my
   age--I am an old man now. So now
   if I draw one line, it's almost like
   enough ... it's more airy, it has more
   space.... later on now [the drawings
   of the Haraz tree] became very,
   very simple. It just became vertical
   lines, lines as if joining the roots of
   earth and the branches of heaven,
   just between the two. I find it very
   restful because it goes along with
   my idea of meditation. (19)

[FIGURE 9 OMITTED]

Eventually he began to produce black and white images of the Haraz tree drawn with the ruler (Figs. 10-11). (20) In this work he includes the lower register of parallel, horizontal lines as in the freehand drawings, but this time they are supported and framed with a thicker black base line. Like the freehand drawing's horizontal earth lines, these turn at the center and rise together as a powerful, vertical column of evenly spaced thin black lines. He trades the emphasis on a single central channel in the earlier freehand drawings for multiple channels of equal width in these works. There is a sharpness in the angle of that turn that is cool and bracing.

[FIGURES 10-11 OMITTED]

Though Seyyed Hossein Nasr's discussion of the spiritual significance of the void in Islamic art was developed primarily through his study of Persian art, it nonetheless provides powerful insight into the channels in el Salahi's series of drawings, especially Figures 10-11 (Nasr 1990:185-91). Nasr explains that Islam's doctrine of Unity is expressed most directly in the testimony of faith in Islam, "There is no divinity but the Divine." Though there are many possible interpretations of this formulation, Nasr focuses on two in order to illuminate the idea of the void:

   The first [meaning of the doctrine]
   is the emphasis on the transient and
   insubstantial character of all that is
   other than God (ma siwa' Llah) and
   therefore the whole of the created
   order--of which the material is the
   most impermanent of all. The second
   is the emphasis upon the "otherness"
   of that which is Ultimate
   Reality, that is, emphasis upon the
   truth that God is completely beyond
   all that the ordinary mind and
   senses can conceive of as reality in
   the usual meaning of the term ...

   According to the first interpretation,
   if we consider God as the Ultimate
   Substance or Pure Being ... then
   there is an aspect of nothingness or
   void which lies in the very nature of the
   whole created order which is a direct
   consequence of the fact that, in an absolute
   sense, only God is real (ibid., 185-6,
   author's emphasis).

Nasr goes on to explain that according to a second interpretation, if we look upon objects as things in the ordinary sense, then the void, which is empty of things, becomes "a trace and an echo of God in the created order" (ibid., p. 186). The void is at once the symbol of the transcendence of God and His presence in all things. Similarly, the white channels in el Salahi's work point to that which is above things. As the interplay between line and void becomes increasingly controlled in this work, as the lines of the material are pared down and the space of the Divine begins to dominate the picture plane, the weight lifts from the material object and the spirit begins to breathe and expand (ibid.).

Ironically, at the same time that el Salahi turns to iconic body and spirit imagery, not media or composition, to address the idea of Unity, the connection between creator and created, he imposes greater physical distance between himself and his work through the use of the ruler which negates gesture. If we place the oil and enamel paintings and the densely packed freehand drawings next to the ruler line drawings, it is clear that they are diametrically opposed methods of representing different aspects of the body. In his earlier work, el Salahi bridges the gap between his body and canvas through physical contact, touch, and the use of media that invoke and preserve the artist's gesture. The artist's body is felt. In his most recent works focused on the Haraz tree, the physical body of the artist is no longer felt, but an abstracted spiritual body, a Divine presence, is seen, it is represented in the laser sharp, synthesized icon of the Haraz tree. The use of the ruler negates gesture and by extension the physical body, imposes physical distance, and implies control. This is precisely what el Salahi tries to convey--greater control over the ideas he channels. The question of connection to the work is the same, but the emphasis has changed from interest in the physical body to interest in interiority, or the spiritual body.

The proverb el Salahi invoked, "In my garment there is nothing but God," illuminates the change of focus in his recent work. Ideally, prayer and meditation are used to bring oneself as close as possible to the Creator; ultimately, if one achieves unity with God, there is no distinction between self and Creator. In this state, there is truly nothing but God in one's garment. The physical body--the "garment'-is of no consequence as it merely contains a channel. We might imagine a person opening their garment, or even lifting off their skin, to reveal el Salahi's restful, controlled black and white channels beneath. To represent this negation of the physical body el Salahi takes up the ruler and, for the first time, imposes a physical distance between his own body and his work.

I would like to thank Kimberly Cleveland for her invaluable assistance with this research, AI Roberts for his thoughtful comments en an earlier draft, and the Obermann Humanities Center at the University of Iowa for quiet office in which I completed this piece.

[This article was accepted for publication in October 2005.]

References cited

Barthes, Roland. 1958. "Cy Twombly: Works on Paper." In The Responsibility of Forms: Critical Essays on Music, Art, and Representation, trans. Richard Howard. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Beier, Ulli. 1993. "The Right to Claim the World: Conversation with Ibrahim el Salahi." Third Text 23:23-30.

--. 1983. "Interview with Ibrahim el Salahi, University of Bayreuth, September." In New Currents, Ancient Rivers, by Jean Kennedy, pp. 111. Washington, DC: The Smithsonian Institution Press,

--. 1961. "Ibrahim el Salahi." Black Orpheus (Ibadan) 10:48-50.

Bourdieu, Pierre. 1977. Outline of a Theory of Practice. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Brenner, Louis. 2000. "Sufism in Africa." In African Spirituality, ed. Jacob K. Olupona, pp. 324-49. New York: Crossroads.

Burckhardt, Titus. 1991. "The Spirituality of African Art." In Islamic Spirituality: Manifestations, ed. Seyyed Hossein Nasr, pp. 506-27. New York: Crossroads.

Connerton, Paul. 1989. How Societies Remember. New York: Cambridge University Press.

El Salahi, Ibrahim. 1991. Research in African Literatures 22 (2):cover, 5, 21, 71, 83, 99,119, 135, 153, 169, 177.

Ernst, Carl W. 1997. The Shambala Guide to Sufism. Boston: Shambala.

Hassan, Salah. 1998. "Ibrahim el Salahi." Nka (Fall/Winter):31-2.

Karrar, Ali Salib. 1992. The Sufi Brotherhoods in the Sudan. London: C. Hurst.

Kennedy, Jean. 1983. New Currents, Ancient Rivers. Washington, DC: The Smithsonian Institution Press.

Kirker, Constance L. 1992. "'This Is not Your Tune Here': Islamic Fundamentalism and Art in Sudan; An Artist interviewed." A Journal of Opinion 20 (2):5-11.

Nagenda, John, Ibrahim el Salahi, and Elimo Njau. 1966. "John Nagenda from Uganda Talks to Ibrahim el Salahi from Sudan and Elimo Njau from Tanzania at the Dakar Festival." Cultural Events in Africa, no. 17, pp. 1-111. Cambridge: African Studies Centre, University of Cambridge.

Nasr, Seyyed Hossein. 1990. Islam Art and Spirituality. Bombay: Oxford University Press.

Roberts, Allen E, and Mary Nooter Roberts. 2003. A Saint in the City: Sufi Arts of Urban Senegal. Los Angeles: UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History.

Savelsburg, Claudia. 1993. "Ibrahim el Salahi." Kunstforum International, Mainz Bd. 122:304-305.

Serumaga, Robert. 1967. "Ibrahim el Salahi Interviewed by Robert Serumaga." In Cultural Events in Africa, no. 27 (February), pp. Mv. Cambridge: African Studies Centre, University of Cambridge.

Soghayroon, A.Z. 1967. "El Salahi: A Painter from Sudan." African Arts 1(1):16-26.

Stoddard, William. 1986. Sufism: The Mystical Doctrines and Methods of Islam. New York: Paragon House.

Vikor, Knut S. 2000. "Sufi Brotherhoods in Africa." In A History of Islam in Africa, eds. Nehemia Levtzion and Randall L. Pouwels, pp. 441-76. Athens: Ohio University Press.

Whiteman, Kaye. 1992. "El Salahi at the Savannah." West Africa (sept. 14-20):1562.

(1.) In addition to the sources cited here, discussions of el Salahi's work and interviews with the artist can be found in Beier 1993, Kennedy 1992, Nagenda et al. 1966, Savelsburg 1993, Soghayroon 1967, and Kirker 1992.

(2.) The School of Design Gordon Memorial College later became the Khartoum School of Fine and Applied Art.

(3.) For more on Sufism, see Brenner 2000, Titus 1991, Ernst 1997, Karrar 1992, Stoddard 1986, and Vikor 2000.

(4.) Ibrahim el Salahi, interview with author, Oxford, England, April 2002 (hereafter cited as "Interview").

(5.) Allen Roberts and Mary Nooter Roberts (2003) discuss several Sufi artists in Senegal who make similar observations about the origins of their work. For example, the architect Serigne Omar Sy and his followers are engaged in the arduous process of building an elaborate compound, including exquisitely crafted domes an towers, using only straw, reeds, and sticks. Serigne Sy explained that God "dictated" the organization of the compound. Roberts and Robert note, "It is significant that Serigne Sy would use the French verb dicter to explain how God has conveyed the plans for his compound to Serigne Sy" because dicter means "to pronounce words that another person writes down" (Roberts and Roberts 2003:221). As such, Serigne Sy has transcribed his building. See also discussion of Moustapha Dime in this same volume, pp 208-211.

(6.) Interview. Here el Salahi repeats almost verbatim comments he has made repeatedly and with increasing conviction over the years. In a 1967 interview with Robert Serumaga he mused, "I honestly believe that I am almost like an agent for some other force which is working through me. It might sound funny but that is exactly how I feel" (Serumaga 1967:ii). To Ulli Beier in the early 1980s el Salahi commented that as he worked he "was being a medium for a spirit of some sort. Something was working through me ... I never made any attempt to stop it ... or even control it; I am not the one who is doing these things. I am merely preparing myself to accept what is coming ..." (Beier 1983:32, 33).

(7.) I would like to thank Chika Okeke-Agulu for drawing my attention to this technique.

(8.) Interview.

(9.) Ibid.

(10.) See, for example, el Salahi 1991:21,119. I would like to thank Kimberly Cleveland for drawing my attention to these reproductions.

(11.) Interview.

(12.) Ibid.

(13.) El Salahi has a long-standing interest in creating a sense of depth, of sculptural three-dimensionality in his work. Much of this interest came through early studies of Giotto's work. In el Salahi's enamel and oil painting, this interest in the sculptural is expressed through use of heavy impasto. In his line drawings, El Salahi uses very fine hatched lines to create a sense of three-dimensional forms.

(14.) Interview.

(15.) Ibid.

(16.) Ibid.

(17.) What separates el Salahi's more recent images of the spiritual body from earlier work on similar themes (i.e., representations of spirits) is the absence of specificity, the level of abstraction, and the physical distance he imposes between himself and his later work. For example, in "One Ramadan a Scorpion Stung My Little Nephew" from the early 1960s, el Salahi evokes the memory of seeing his nephew's spirit three days after he passed away from a scorpion sting. El Salahi writes, "We took him home cold and silent. We buried him. He came back. I saw him three days later at dawn. He spoke to me. I shivered, but I was happy. He is alive. But where" (Beier 1961:50). This earlier image, however, depicts the physical appearance of a specific spirit--it is figurative--whereas his recent work focuses on generalized representations of the spirit. See also Serumaga 1967:iii.

(18.) El Salahi said that he usually feels nervous, "like a chicken trying to lay an egg" when he has an idea, or, in this case, uses a new tool.

(19.) Interview.

(20.) Several colleagues have pointed out that at a formal level, el Salahi's drawings towards the end of this sequence are similar to Frank Stella's "stripe paintings" of the late 1950s and early 1960s, especially his Black Paintings. El Salahi does not mention Stella as an Influence on his latest work, and at some level such a comparison threatens to erase the very different intellectual and spiritual trajectory that brought el Salahi to this imagery. Perhaps a more useful comparison would be between these works and formally similar pieces by Senegalese artist Viye Diba, who is a Mouride (Mouridism is a Sufi movement). Diba creates canvases from strip-woven shroud material that he sews together, mounts vertically onto wooden frames, then paints over, leaving the seams between each strip bare. The final effect is a vertical interplay between line and color that resonates with el Salahi's later drawings of the Haraz tree. The formal relationship between their work is further supported by philosophical similarities between the two artists. Like el Salahi, Diba is interested in the dialogue between the medium and the one creating (Roberts and Roberts 2003:196), and tries to cultivate a relationship between his work and the spirit of Mouridism (ibid., p. 199). For images of Diba's work see Roberts and Roberts 2003:196-202.