By AIC Artist Y. Tesfay
This piece is from a childhood memory of wild African dogs, which used to terrify me whenever I had to go to the market in Sudan early in the morning. My older brother at that time was coming into his teenage years and wanted to run the streets. So my father and him got into it and had a big fight, which led to him getting kicked out of the house. After this heated argument and beating my brother recieved from my father, he turns to me and says, “You are going to the market at 6:00 in the morning to pick up the bread!”
At this point I was eight years old or so, and had to weigh the consequences of telling my dad I did not want to go out there early in the morning because of the wild dogs that roamed the streets. But my decision was made clear because either I live with an angry father or face those dogs for a few minutes in the morning. I went with the latter.
As I left the house, I had to develop a plan of how I would deal with those wild dogs. It became a hide and seek game, where I would walk those dirt roads constantly looking for my hunters. Whenever I got any sign or sound of them roaming about, I would hide until they left and then move on my way, either home or to the market. Those dogs had gotten into my psyche so much that I used to have a reoccurring nightmare. I believe working on this piece was a way to subconsciously purge myself from those old images.