Ahmed Umar is a Sudanese interdisciplinary artist based in Norway. Talitin, تالِتِن The Third (2023­–2024) shows Umar performing a Sudanese Bridal Dance, a tradition now almost vanished that would culminate weeklong wedding celebrations. A display of beauty, agility, wealth, and fitness, here Umar performs the ritual to celebrate the collective customs he grew up with, while also interrogating aspects of their own queer identity and experiences, and their connection to family and community.

“As Sudanese people, and despite the excruciating colonial history, bloodbaths, and wars, we are avid joyseekers, dare I generalize! We commune everywhere and at every opportunity. For instance, our weddings are traditionally seven days of celebration, rituals, and lots, lots of dance. The bride rounds off the whole festival with a dance she entertains herself, her husband-to-be, and all the attendees with. The Bridal Dance, a gem of culture passed from woman to woman through hundreds of years, maybe even thousands. It is one of the few traditions that resisted Arab and English colonisation and the multiple waves of the so-called Islamization of Sudanese society. It remained authentic, yet open and inclusive to new trends in dance and music.”

At Objectspace, this moving image conveys the power of intergenerational traditions and making practices as critical cultural expression. Umar highlights the communicative potential of adornment and how the knowledge passed through craft and movement traditions holds and shapes our identities. 

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Ahmed Umar is an interdisciplinary artist and visual autobiographer. They have lived in Norway since arriving from Sudan in 2008 as a political refugee. Using media including ceramics, jewellery, performance, installation and photography, Umar explores the intersection of cultural traditions, religion and their life story. They graduated from Oslo National Academy of the Arts in 2016 and have since developed an extensive exhibition practice, including works in the 60th Biennale d’Arte di Venezia, Biennale of Sydney, and Toronto Biennale of Art.