The ghosts of Sudan on the walls of Harlem

Across the full breadth of the Atlantic Ocean from Sudan, in the serene and controlled space of The Africa Center in Harlem, New York, 42 photographs hang beneath carefully curated lighting. They speak in a silent yet forceful language, carrying memories of Sudan – from the crowded, peaceful protests of the 2019 Revolution to the intimate desolation of homes now under constant siege and shelling. Together, these images bear witness to the exhausted faces and fragile dignity of everyday resistance unfolding against the backdrop of war.

Six of the twelve photographers featured in Resistance in Memory: Visions of Sudan are still inside war zones, smuggling their testimony out through encrypted channels, determined not to let the world look away.

The conflict between the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) approaches its third anniversary in April. Since fighting erupted in 2023, more than 50,000 people have reportedly been killed, while around 12.5 million have been forcibly displaced, making Sudan the world’s largest displacement crisis today. Over 30 million people now require humanitarian assistance, as famine spreads and large parts of the country face catastrophic food insecurity.

Yet, as the photographs at the Center testify, the world has largely turned a blind eye to this so-called “forgotten war,” which continues to receive only a fraction of the international attention and aid directed toward other global crises.

Edith Arance, the curator who worked on the exhibition from Madrid, where it was first shown at the PHotoEspaña festival in 2025, explains that she deliberately sought photographers outside the usual circuits of the art market and professional photojournalism.

“This approach often leads to genuine and original photos, perhaps never intended for the press, much less for an art exhibition addressing current events,” she told Geeska. According to her, these artists take images not for contracts or commissions, but as a release, a mental note, a memento.

“In moments of intense danger or profound loss, I am not just a photographer pressing a shutter. I am a human being first, a son of this land, breathing the same air, trembling at the same sounds,” says Abdelsallam Abdallah, a photographer based in Nyala, Darfur. He describes the moral tightrope faced by photographers working amid conflict. “Fear is always present. My heart races. Questions come before the image: Should I move closer, or step back? Is my presence meaningful, or reckless? The pain before me is not something I observe – I am part of it.”

This intimacy, Arance says, is the “magic” of working with grassroots photographers, avoiding the extra-activist tendencies of outsiders who arrive briefly, harvest images of trauma, and leave. Instead, these photographs are shaped through personal trust; some are even withheld out of respect for those depicted.

It was this ethical weight that inspired the exhibition’s title, Resistance in Memory. Arance deliberately rejected the word resilience, which she felt had become overused and prone to romanticizing suffering. Instead, she frames resistance as a physical and mental act – the defiance required to lift a phone in Omdurman or Nyala, where simply documenting events can make one a target. As photographer Altayeb Morhal told Arance, Sudan is an extinct country, and photographers are “bearing witness to something that no longer exists.” Sudan, Morhal suggests, will become something new, for better or worse – but not what it once was.

Another of these silent witnesses is Shaima Merghani, for whom photographing amid the chaos of Omdurman has become instinctual. She describes the daily assault of gunfire and shelling, where the camera becomes a lifeline, transforming the bare minimum of survival into narrative. Knowing her photographs have traveled from the war zone to the walls of New York gives her “a reason to continue.”

Her message to visitors in Harlem is stark: “Sudanese lives matter, and this so-called forgotten war needs to be highlighted. Don’t look away, so it’s not forgotten anymore.” Shaima sees a painful continuity in the faces she freezes in time: the same youth who once chanted for a better Sudan in the streets in 2019 are now sacrificing their lives amid the wreckage.

Furthermore, to bridge geographical and contextual gaps in the exhibition, Sudanese-American poet Dalia Elhassan contributed lyrical counterpoints, creating a sensory entry point where viewers encounter verse before confronting the stark visual evidence of loss and displacement. Her poetry situates the exhibition within Harlem’s own history of civil rights struggles and speaks directly to American audiences, ensuring the photographs transcend mere illustrations of news events and become invitations to conversation.

For those still inside Sudan, like Abdallah, the psychological weight is constant. Images do not end with the click of the shutter; they return unexpectedly in quiet moments.

“I live inside it. This is my land. These are my people. That makes the burden heavier, but also more honest,” he explains. The camera becomes a companion with which he continually questions whether he has honored the dignity of those in the frame, or failed them. Yet he searches for small sources of light – gestures of solidarity and quiet acts of persistence that shape pain into something he can endure.

Abdallah sees the New York exhibition not as a personal achievement but as a narrowing of the distance between two worlds. “As long as I can carry the voices of those no one hears, I will continue. That belief does not erase the exhaustion, but it gives it meaning,” he says, reflecting the revolution’s wounded but unyielding spirit.

Since November 2025, the walls of The Africa Center have held more than photographs; they hold the pulse of a nation refusing erasure. As the exhibition approaches its closure on 22 March 2026, these testimonies transform viewers from passive observers into necessary witnesses to a suffering the world can no longer ignore.

While war seeks to extinguish Sudan’s future, the defiance captured in these frames keeps the spirit of the revolution alive. By refusing to look away, we ensure that this forgotten crisis finds a permanent place in the global conscience.

The ghosts of an extinct nation are speaking through the lens – and the world has no excuse to remain silent.