Exhibition Sarah Elawad - When the War is Over

The Africa Center Plaza Commission, 2025

Sarah Elawad's When the War is Over transforms The Africa Center’s Fifth Avenue windows, offering a powerful and poetic visual statement that engages passersby in a conversation about culture, memory, and resilience.

Born in London with familial roots in Sudan, Elawad draws on personal memory, diasporic identity, and contemporary design to respond to Sudan’s ongoing and underreported conflict. At the heart of Elawad’s installation is the tobe—a traditional Sudanese garment that has evolved into a powerful symbol of womanhood, cultural identity, and revolutionary presence. For Elawad, it becomes both material and metaphor: a fabric that binds women across generations, geographies, and political struggles.

The words “When the war is over I will make space for my feelings” come from a text by the poet Safia Elhillo entitled “One year of war in Sudan.” Elhillo reflects on the impossibility of articulating a response to the conflict, a burden that resonates with Elawad, who writes: “Amid loss and upheaval, we rarely have space to grieve, to feel, or to simply be.” 

Reinterpreting the tobe in vibrant, contemporary patterns, When the War is Over responds to Sudan’s conflict and erasure of cultural heritage with a quiet act of defiance and care, inviting viewers to reflect on the stories that survive through fabric, form, and collective remembrance.

Related Programming

Museum Mile Festival, June 10, 2025, 6—9pm

Sarah Elawad: When the War is Over will debut at the 47th annual Museum Mile Festival, a celebration of free art and culture at New York City cultural institutions along Fifth Avenue’s Museum Mile. The event will feature live music by Alsarah and the Nubatones, a group born out of many dinner conversations between Alsarah and Rami El Aasser about Nubian ‘songs of return’, modern migration patterns and the cultural exchanges between Sudan and Egypt.