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Lot Essay
“It has been some time now, since I think the year 2000, that the idea came to me about this tree called Haraz… it’s a huge tree with a very, very soft pulp – and there is a legend around it. They say that Haraz tree fought against the rain. Because during the rainy season and the flooding of the Nile, it is completely dry, with dry leaves, nothing at all…then during the drought it comes out with blooms and with fruit and everything. This is the definitive statement. Like saying, ‘I am me! I am an individual! I do not follow what everyone is doing!...When everyone is going to be green let them be green, I am not.’” — Ibrahim El-Salahi (S. M. Hassan, A Visionary Modernist, London 2013).
Captivated by an acacia tree found on the banks of the Nile, Ibrahim El-Salahi began his celebrated Meditation Tree series around the turn of the millennium. At the heart of this body of work is the Haraz tree, whose unusual relationship with its environment offered the artist a compelling image of independence and endurance. In Sudanese mythology and folklore, the tree is believed to have ‘fought against the rain’: during the rainy season and the flooding of the Nile, it remains dry, with withered leaves and no fruit, while during periods of drought it blossoms and bears its produce. For El-Salahi, this inversion of the natural cycle becomes a powerful declaration of individuality.
The Meditation Tree series developed the tree subject into a wider meditation on the human condition. Rooted in the earth and extending towards the heavens, the tree can be understood as a link between the earthly and the divine, the creator and the created. It also became a form of self-portrait and spiritual metaphor through which El-Salahi explored endurance, transformation and renewal. This symbolism carries particular resonance within his own experience of displacement, imprisonment and physical suffering. His art has long functioned as a means of meditation, including during the period in which he was imprisoned without trial in Sudan for more than six months, and more recently as a way of coping with chronic pain.
Inspired by his own drawing baring the same name of the series, Meditation Tree represents the only three-dimensional form of El-Salahi’s long career. In translating the simple line, which surrounds the form in the drawing into sculpture, the artist transformed a two-dimensional motif into a physical presence. The resulting form retains the essence of the drawn line while allowing the tree to occupy space as an autonomous presence. The sculpture therefore marks a significant extension of an idea that had remained within El-Salahi’s practice for decades.
Meditation Tree 6 also introduced a new dimension to El-Salahi’s conception of the series: the relationship between the individual and the collective. The artist explained, “They represent human society. Like the identical kind of nature of things. What I meant is that one tree [should be] represented many times in the same form to represent the many [parts] of the great human society. The only [separation] in human society is the difference in colour and a bit of culture, but they [we] are basically the same. Of the same origin.” (S. M. Hassan, A Visionary Modernist, London, 2013). Repetition thus becomes a means of expressing both commonality and difference, with each tree originating from the same fundamental form while ultimately acquiring its own identity. This distinction becomes increasingly apparent through the passage of time. El-Salahi notes that the Meditation Trees “are bound to crack, grow patina, and may need a bit of repair every now and then, much like we do," with each sculpture eventually becoming different (A. Sooke, “Ibrahim El-Salahi: Against the Grain”, in The Art Newspaper, October 2021). Ageing and material change consequently become intrinsic to the works rather than signs of deterioration, introducing the passage of time as another dimension of the artist’s meditation on human existence.
El-Salahi had long envisaged extending the individual tree into a forest of sculptural forms. In 2018, he presented his first sculptures in the courtyard of Somerset House in London, and thereafter continued to seek an opportunity to realise a larger gathering of trees. This ambition was fulfilled with his participation in Desert X AlUla 2026, where Salahi’s Forest was conceived as a grove within the dramatic landscape of ancient AlUla. Here, the repetition of the tree form became an environment in its own right, transforming the artist’s longstanding investigation into an encounter between sculpture, landscape and collective experience. Presented under the theme ‘Space Without Measure’, inspired by Khalil Gibran, the installation created a meditative setting in which the sculptures could be experienced as a collective whole. The forest brought together the central ideas that had developed throughout the Meditation Tree series: the relationship between the individual and the collective, the earthly and the spiritual, and permanence and change. What began with a single tree consequently expanded into a gathering of distinct forms, each retaining its individuality while contributing to a larger sense of unity.
Meditation Tree 6 is one of five unique larger trees created for this project, three of which are entering institutional collections. As one of the sculptures through which El-Salahi realised his long-held ambition to create a forest, the present work represents the culmination of an idea that had occupied the artist for more than two decades. It brings together the Haraz tree’s cultural symbolism, the introspective nature of El-Salahi’s practice and his enduring interest in the relationship between individual identity and collective humanity, translating these concerns into a rare and fully realised three-dimensional form.
Born in Sudan in 1930, El-Salahi is one of the most important living African artists today and a key figure in the development of African Modernism. After graduating from the Slade School in London, on his return to Sudan in 1957, he established a new visual vocabulary, which arose from his own pioneering integration of Sudanese, Islamic, African, Arab and Western artistic traditions. Tate Modern’s 2013 retrospective of El-Salahi’s work was historically the Museum’s first exhibition dedicated to African Modernism.
His work is included in the permanent collections of important international museums, such as the Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; The Art Institute of Chicago; The National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C.; Newark Museum of Art; The British Museum, London; Tate, London; The Ashmolean Museum, Oxford; Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin; Guggenheim Abu Dhabi; and the Sharjah Art Foundation.
Captivated by an acacia tree found on the banks of the Nile, Ibrahim El-Salahi began his celebrated Meditation Tree series around the turn of the millennium. At the heart of this body of work is the Haraz tree, whose unusual relationship with its environment offered the artist a compelling image of independence and endurance. In Sudanese mythology and folklore, the tree is believed to have ‘fought against the rain’: during the rainy season and the flooding of the Nile, it remains dry, with withered leaves and no fruit, while during periods of drought it blossoms and bears its produce. For El-Salahi, this inversion of the natural cycle becomes a powerful declaration of individuality.
The Meditation Tree series developed the tree subject into a wider meditation on the human condition. Rooted in the earth and extending towards the heavens, the tree can be understood as a link between the earthly and the divine, the creator and the created. It also became a form of self-portrait and spiritual metaphor through which El-Salahi explored endurance, transformation and renewal. This symbolism carries particular resonance within his own experience of displacement, imprisonment and physical suffering. His art has long functioned as a means of meditation, including during the period in which he was imprisoned without trial in Sudan for more than six months, and more recently as a way of coping with chronic pain.
Inspired by his own drawing baring the same name of the series, Meditation Tree represents the only three-dimensional form of El-Salahi’s long career. In translating the simple line, which surrounds the form in the drawing into sculpture, the artist transformed a two-dimensional motif into a physical presence. The resulting form retains the essence of the drawn line while allowing the tree to occupy space as an autonomous presence. The sculpture therefore marks a significant extension of an idea that had remained within El-Salahi’s practice for decades.
Meditation Tree 6 also introduced a new dimension to El-Salahi’s conception of the series: the relationship between the individual and the collective. The artist explained, “They represent human society. Like the identical kind of nature of things. What I meant is that one tree [should be] represented many times in the same form to represent the many [parts] of the great human society. The only [separation] in human society is the difference in colour and a bit of culture, but they [we] are basically the same. Of the same origin.” (S. M. Hassan, A Visionary Modernist, London, 2013). Repetition thus becomes a means of expressing both commonality and difference, with each tree originating from the same fundamental form while ultimately acquiring its own identity. This distinction becomes increasingly apparent through the passage of time. El-Salahi notes that the Meditation Trees “are bound to crack, grow patina, and may need a bit of repair every now and then, much like we do," with each sculpture eventually becoming different (A. Sooke, “Ibrahim El-Salahi: Against the Grain”, in The Art Newspaper, October 2021). Ageing and material change consequently become intrinsic to the works rather than signs of deterioration, introducing the passage of time as another dimension of the artist’s meditation on human existence.
El-Salahi had long envisaged extending the individual tree into a forest of sculptural forms. In 2018, he presented his first sculptures in the courtyard of Somerset House in London, and thereafter continued to seek an opportunity to realise a larger gathering of trees. This ambition was fulfilled with his participation in Desert X AlUla 2026, where Salahi’s Forest was conceived as a grove within the dramatic landscape of ancient AlUla. Here, the repetition of the tree form became an environment in its own right, transforming the artist’s longstanding investigation into an encounter between sculpture, landscape and collective experience. Presented under the theme ‘Space Without Measure’, inspired by Khalil Gibran, the installation created a meditative setting in which the sculptures could be experienced as a collective whole. The forest brought together the central ideas that had developed throughout the Meditation Tree series: the relationship between the individual and the collective, the earthly and the spiritual, and permanence and change. What began with a single tree consequently expanded into a gathering of distinct forms, each retaining its individuality while contributing to a larger sense of unity.
Meditation Tree 6 is one of five unique larger trees created for this project, three of which are entering institutional collections. As one of the sculptures through which El-Salahi realised his long-held ambition to create a forest, the present work represents the culmination of an idea that had occupied the artist for more than two decades. It brings together the Haraz tree’s cultural symbolism, the introspective nature of El-Salahi’s practice and his enduring interest in the relationship between individual identity and collective humanity, translating these concerns into a rare and fully realised three-dimensional form.
Born in Sudan in 1930, El-Salahi is one of the most important living African artists today and a key figure in the development of African Modernism. After graduating from the Slade School in London, on his return to Sudan in 1957, he established a new visual vocabulary, which arose from his own pioneering integration of Sudanese, Islamic, African, Arab and Western artistic traditions. Tate Modern’s 2013 retrospective of El-Salahi’s work was historically the Museum’s first exhibition dedicated to African Modernism.
His work is included in the permanent collections of important international museums, such as the Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; The Art Institute of Chicago; The National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C.; Newark Museum of Art; The British Museum, London; Tate, London; The Ashmolean Museum, Oxford; Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin; Guggenheim Abu Dhabi; and the Sharjah Art Foundation.