A Statement on Culture, Memory, and Resilience for Sudan
NEW YORK, NY - The Africa Center today announced Sarah Elawad: When the War is Over as the 2025 Plaza Commission. Elawad’s installation transforms the Center’s Fifth Avenue windows, offering a powerful and poetic visual statement along Museum Mile that engages passersby in a conversation about culture, memory, and resilience.
Elawad draws on personal memory, storytelling, and contemporary design to respond to Sudan’s ongoing and underreported conflict. While media coverage has primarily focused on humanitarian crises and political instability, Elawad’s work foregrounds a parallel crisis: the erasure of cultural heritage most egregiously represented by the destruction and looting of the National Museum in Khartoum, the displacement of artists, and the silencing of creative voices.
At the heart of Elawad’s installation is the tobe, a traditional Sudanese garment worn by women. Once a marker of marital status, the tobe has evolved into a powerful symbol of womanhood, cultural identity, and, in moments of political upheaval, revolutionary presence. From celebratory floral prints to all-white garments worn during protest, the tobe carries deep emotional and cultural resonance. For Elawad, it becomes both material and metaphor: a fabric that binds women across generations, geographies, and political struggles.
When the War is Over reinterprets the tobe in vibrant, contemporary patterns — cheetah prints, florals, and abstract textures — that reflect how diasporic Sudanese women are reclaiming and reimagining this garment. Elawad’s practice, grounded in visual research and a sensibility for texture and textile, elevates the tobe as a carrier of cultural memory, and a testament to the enduring presence of Sudanese women in the face of violence.
The words “When the war is over I will make space for my feelings” are drawn from a text by the poet Safia Elhillo entitled “One year of war in Sudan.” Elhillo reflects on the impossibility of articulating a response to the conflict, a burden that resonates with Elawad, who writes: “Amid loss and upheaval, we rarely have space to grieve, to feel, or to simply be.”
Elawad shared that many of her most meaningful connections to Sudan are through women whose strength, sweetness, and style have shaped her own sense of identity. In a moment where Sudanese cultural landmarks are being desecrated and creative communities displaced, her installation becomes an act of defiance and care, inviting viewers to reflect on the stories that survive through fabric, form, and collective remembrance.
Sarah Elawad said: “The tobe reminds me of all the great things I know about the women of my life. It’s an ode to their beauty and resilience, but also to the suffering and silencing that women in Sudan are enduring right now.”
Ambassador Martin Kimani, President and CEO of The Africa Center, said, “Conflict is too often reduced to statistics, obscuring its deeper impacts. In Sudan and beyond, war is also a cultural reckoning that assaults community and trust, tearing at the bonds of belonging and tolerance. This installation confronts that reality by centering cultural memory as a battleground for cohesion, recovery, and reconstruction. I hope it becomes an entry point for dialogue, for empathy, and, ultimately, for the peace we seek in Sudan.”
Elawad’s window installation launches a season of programming that centers Sudanese art, culture, and voices, an intentional embrace of empowering narratives of endurance, creativity, and community.
This exhibition is part of a growing body of work at The Africa Center that affirms culture as strategy in times of upheaval. We welcome partners, collaborators, and audiences to join us in deepening this commitment.
When the War is Over will be on view at The Africa Center beginning June 3, 2025.
The exhibition is made possible at The Africa Center with the support of New York City’s Department of Cultural Affairs.
Exhibition Dates and Hours:
June 3, 2025—May 10, 2026
This outdoor installation can be visited at any time.
Location:
The Africa Center
1280 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY
About Sarah Elawad
Sarah Elawad is a British Sudanese artist. She received her MFA in Graphic Design from the Yale School of Art in 2023 and currently resides in Brooklyn, NY. Sarah’s artwork celebrates beauty, love, and her culture, often highlighted through explorations of her interpersonal relationships. Her visual practice is collage-like, kitsch, and experimental, encompassing a diverse range of materials such as experimental prints, garments, textiles, video art, installations, and more.
Sarah has had work exhibited in New York, Amsterdam, Shanghai, Doha and more. She has most recently had two solo shows exhibiting her work at the Brown Arts Institute in Rhode Island and also at the 10___12 Gallery in Istanbul. Sarah has also participated in various art book fairs around the world under the experimental printing project she co-founded: Water With Water. Her work has been included in the artist book collection in the Watson Library at The MET in New York, The British Library in London, the Asia Art Archive in Brooklyn, and others. Learn more at sarahelawad.com.
Media Assets
Artist Headshot
Press Images (high-resolution available upon request)
Contact
press@theafricacenter.org
About The Africa Center
The Africa Center is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit institution committed to the principle that a just and peaceful world begins with a flourishing Africa in deep communion with its diaspora. Located in New York City, The Africa Center convenes artists, creatives, cultural leaders, entrepreneurs, investors, and policymakers to shape artistic expression, narratives, investments, and partnerships critical to the prosperous and secure future of Africa and its diaspora. Learn more at www.theafricacenter.org and follow @TheAfricaCenter on X, Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube.
Elawad draws on personal memory, storytelling, and contemporary design to respond to Sudan’s ongoing and underreported conflict. While media coverage has primarily focused on humanitarian crises and political instability, Elawad’s work foregrounds a parallel crisis: the erasure of cultural heritage most egregiously represented by the destruction and looting of the National Museum in Khartoum, the displacement of artists, and the silencing of creative voices.
At the heart of Elawad’s installation is the tobe, a traditional Sudanese garment worn by women. Once a marker of marital status, the tobe has evolved into a powerful symbol of womanhood, cultural identity, and, in moments of political upheaval, revolutionary presence. From celebratory floral prints to all-white garments worn during protest, the tobe carries deep emotional and cultural resonance. For Elawad, it becomes both material and metaphor: a fabric that binds women across generations, geographies, and political struggles.
When the War is Over reinterprets the tobe in vibrant, contemporary patterns — cheetah prints, florals, and abstract textures — that reflect how diasporic Sudanese women are reclaiming and reimagining this garment. Elawad’s practice, grounded in visual research and a sensibility for texture and textile, elevates the tobe as a carrier of cultural memory, and a testament to the enduring presence of Sudanese women in the face of violence.
The words “When the war is over I will make space for my feelings” are drawn from a text by the poet Safia Elhillo entitled “One year of war in Sudan.” Elhillo reflects on the impossibility of articulating a response to the conflict, a burden that resonates with Elawad, who writes: “Amid loss and upheaval, we rarely have space to grieve, to feel, or to simply be.”
Elawad shared that many of her most meaningful connections to Sudan are through women whose strength, sweetness, and style have shaped her own sense of identity. In a moment where Sudanese cultural landmarks are being desecrated and creative communities displaced, her installation becomes an act of defiance and care, inviting viewers to reflect on the stories that survive through fabric, form, and collective remembrance.
Sarah Elawad said: “The tobe reminds me of all the great things I know about the women of my life. It’s an ode to their beauty and resilience, but also to the suffering and silencing that women in Sudan are enduring right now.”
Ambassador Martin Kimani, President and CEO of The Africa Center, said, “Conflict is too often reduced to statistics, obscuring its deeper impacts. In Sudan and beyond, war is also a cultural reckoning that assaults community and trust, tearing at the bonds of belonging and tolerance. This installation confronts that reality by centering cultural memory as a battleground for cohesion, recovery, and reconstruction. I hope it becomes an entry point for dialogue, for empathy, and, ultimately, for the peace we seek in Sudan.”
Elawad’s window installation launches a season of programming that centers Sudanese art, culture, and voices, an intentional embrace of empowering narratives of endurance, creativity, and community.
This exhibition is part of a growing body of work at The Africa Center that affirms culture as strategy in times of upheaval. We welcome partners, collaborators, and audiences to join us in deepening this commitment.
When the War is Over will be on view at The Africa Center beginning June 3, 2025.
The exhibition is made possible at The Africa Center with the support of New York City’s Department of Cultural Affairs.
Exhibition Dates and Hours:
June 3, 2025—May 10, 2026
This outdoor installation can be visited at any time.
Location:
The Africa Center
1280 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY
About Sarah Elawad
Sarah Elawad is a British Sudanese artist. She received her MFA in Graphic Design from the Yale School of Art in 2023 and currently resides in Brooklyn, NY. Sarah’s artwork celebrates beauty, love, and her culture, often highlighted through explorations of her interpersonal relationships. Her visual practice is collage-like, kitsch, and experimental, encompassing a diverse range of materials such as experimental prints, garments, textiles, video art, installations, and more.
Sarah has had work exhibited in New York, Amsterdam, Shanghai, Doha and more. She has most recently had two solo shows exhibiting her work at the Brown Arts Institute in Rhode Island and also at the 10___12 Gallery in Istanbul. Sarah has also participated in various art book fairs around the world under the experimental printing project she co-founded: Water With Water. Her work has been included in the artist book collection in the Watson Library at The MET in New York, The British Library in London, the Asia Art Archive in Brooklyn, and others. Learn more at sarahelawad.com.
Media Assets
Artist Headshot
Press Images (high-resolution available upon request)
Contact
press@theafricacenter.org
About The Africa Center
The Africa Center is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit institution committed to the principle that a just and peaceful world begins with a flourishing Africa in deep communion with its diaspora. Located in New York City, The Africa Center convenes artists, creatives, cultural leaders, entrepreneurs, investors, and policymakers to shape artistic expression, narratives, investments, and partnerships critical to the prosperous and secure future of Africa and its diaspora. Learn more at www.theafricacenter.org and follow @TheAfricaCenter on X, Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube.