Abushariaa Ahmed was born in 1966 in Omdurman, Sudan. He graduated in 1990 from Sudan University’s College of Fine & Applied Arts. Abushariaa’s style is influenced by the pioneers of Sudan’s contemporary art scene, including Ibrahim el Salahi, Professor Shipprain and Rashid Diab. In the 1960s their Khartoum School was recognised as an emergent modernist movement, known for its Sudanawiyya style – a synthesis of Western influences and other traditions that captures Sudan’s diversity. Abushariaa left the Sudan in the mid-90s and spent some years in Kenya as an artist in residence at the Paa ya Paa Arts Centre in Nairobi. He later lived for a short period in Cologne, Germany, before settling in Kampala, Uganda, in 2000, where he worked as a freelance artist. After many years in the diaspora, Abushariaa went recently back to Khartoum. His semi-abstract, colourful, mixed-media artwork and his distinctive ink drawings are rich with ornamental and patterned symbols of his Nubian culture and occasionally Arabic calligraphy. Abushariaa has exhibited extensively in East Africa and in Canada, the US, Germany, Denmark, Monaco and the UK. His artwork is held in many private and public collections all over the world – in the African Museum of Art in Seoul, South Korea, and in the collection of the World Bank in Washington DC, USA amongst others.