What does Sudan look like through the eyes of its women artists?

There are women sitting in rooms filled with plants and cats. Others appear dressed in elaborate costumes, surrounded by colourful fabrics and flowers. Some have exaggerated hands and feet, while others are tea sellers, workers and ordinary women whose stories rarely make it onto gallery walls.

Meet Reem Aljeally, Atong Atem, Amel Bashier and Amna Elhassan. Working across painting, photography and installation, these four artists share roots in Sudanese and South Sudanese cultures but have very different ways of representing women. Their work moves between everyday life, personal memories, historical traditions and questions of identity.

There is something wonderfully familiar about Reem Aljeally's paintings. Women sit quietly in colourful rooms, surrounded by houseplants, cats and everyday objects. Nothing particularly dramatic seems to be happening — and that is exactly the point.

Born in Sudan in 1997, Aljeally originally studied architecture, which might explain her fascination with interiors. Her paintings give women space to simply exist, without performing for anyone watching.

Beyond her own practice, she founded Bait Alnisa, a platform supporting Sudanese women artists, and Sudan Art Archive, an initiative documenting the country's artistic heritage. Her work has been exhibited internationally, including in London, Cairo and Hamburg.

Atong Atem's photographs are almost impossible to scroll past. Think elaborate costumes, bold patterns, flowers, saturated colours and confident faces looking straight into the camera.

Born in Ethiopia to South Sudanese parents and raised in Australia, Atem draws inspiration from African studio photography. In her Studio Series, she recreates the atmosphere of traditional portrait studios, using carefully arranged backdrops and props to explore how people choose to present themselves.

Her series Surat (2022), whose title means "photograph" in Sudanese Arabic, draws on family photographs and inherited memories. In October 2026, the National Gallery of Victoria opens Passage: The Art of Atong Atem, bringing together more than 65 works from her career.

The women in Amel Bashier's paintings are impossible to ignore. Their hands and feet are exaggerated, their clothes covered in intricate patterns, and their bodies arranged in bold, almost monumental compositions.

Born in Sudan in 1981, Bashier draws inspiration from Nubian, Assyrian and Indian visual traditions. Her subjects, however, are often ordinary women — working, resting, gathering or simply going about their day.

Her 2024 exhibition Ward El Juri at Addis Fine Art in London introduced her distinctive style to a wider audience. In September 2026, she opened Essence of Life at ZOLLAMT MMK in Frankfurt, exploring women's everyday experiences through paintings that combine strength, vulnerability and tenderness.

Bashier gives ordinary women the kind of presence usually reserved for historical figures.

A woman selling tea on a street corner. People sharing food. Everyday scenes that might otherwise go unnoticed.

These are the subjects Sudanese artist Amna Elhassan brings into her work. Born in Khartoum in 1988, she studied architecture before turning to painting, printmaking and installation.

Her painting Tea Lady (2020) focuses on the women who run small tea businesses in Sudan's streets — familiar figures who rarely become subjects of major artworks.

In 2022, Elhassan presented Deconstructed Bodies – In Search Of Home at Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, including a monumental mural addressing Sudan's democracy movement. Her more recent paintings explore food, community and solidarity during the country's ongoing conflict.

Through her work, Elhassan asks us to pay attention to the people and stories that are so easily overlooked.