A Museum in Every Home

by Rund Al-Arabi

Stamp Letter. Rund Al-Arabi.

I never saw my grandfather, but I know what he looked like. I saw him not with my own eyes but someone else’s. Someone who may not have thought about themselves as a messenger at that moment, as a portal for many upcoming generations in the future. Someone that simply took a photograph.

I made these photo collages in an attempt to explore the juxtaposition of different eras in Sudanese lives as well as the similarities remaining, which leads to the birth of a dimension that isn’t a complete present nor a complete past.

The lack of documentation and inclusive representation of the past, as well as how things are currently seeping through our hands, generates a concern. People in the future will struggle to understand this country and its people. Which leads me to ask: what would you do with the amount of history that is in your hands?

Looking past the nostalgic elements in photographs rearranges the past, and in this rearrangement, one gets to see beyond the usual visual patterns and discover stark differences as well. 

I hope to remind people, through my work, that they too are their own historians and that there’s a museum in every home that’s waiting to be conserved for the rest to witness. 

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Working on merging her literary and visual sides together, Rund Al-Arabi is a photographer and writer from Sudan.