Sudan is a country divided — and that’s no secret. To the north are the Muslims with supposedly Arab roots, to the south traditionalists and Christians whose ancestry lies in sub-Saharan Africa — a primary school simplification, I know, but then I’m not a political analyst, just someone trying to make sense of a country that seems determined to destroy itself.

And I am not alone.

For with a lot more knowledge and a real stake in the outcome are Sudanese artists, as always at the forefront of the struggle for identity and now actively trying to forge what the scholar and curator Salah Hassan has called “A national culture that cuts through the ethnic, religious and cultural pluralism (and) becomes a focal point for a new national consciousness.”

Some 40 paintings and ceramics spanning around 50 years, the work of 17 of these artists, all based in Khartoum, have been taken to the Circle Art Gallery in Nairobi by director Danda Jaroljmek as part of her campaign to engage visitors more deeply in the work of the whole East African region.

Many Sudanese artists we know well.

El Tayeb Dawelbeit and Yassir Ali are among those who fled their native land to live in Nairobi and their works feature regularly in galleries throughout the city.

But this lot are mostly new to Kenya, with a few welcome exceptions like Salah Elmur and Abushariaa Ahmed (whose paintings are shown at the Red Hill Gallery on the road to Limuru along with other Sudanese), and another name I recognised, Rashid Diab, whose women in bright robes set on white grounds are a regular feature at the One-Off Gallery across the city in Rosslyn.

Here at Circle, even Diab is offering something different for us to see. These paintings were made some 25 years ago, and are watercolours that stain the paper with their rich, saturated hues.

One in particular from Diab’s Series of the Nile, practically takes you into those waters, beneath a storm of vibrant ultramarine deepening to Prussian blue. A splash of scarlet takes the eye at the right of the painting while three diamond shapes at the bottom left — hinting at the sails of feluccas — demonstrate just how good Diab is at setting a mood and giving us a sense of place.

All the artists in this Circle show trained at the College of Fine and Applied Arts in Khartoum, with some in turn becoming teachers, and in this exhibition they and their former students show side by side, their relationships in the studios setting up fascinating comparisons and an almost kinetic energy on the walls. (As in Uganda but not always in Kenya, it seems that the Sudanese regard some formal training as quite handy if you hope to work as an artist.)

Comparisons work within the generations too, where a cross pollination of ideas and inspirations can be seen.

For instance, the fractured planes of Elamin Osman’s Portrait 1981 and Illustration 1978 (and what superb etchings these would make) find echoes in Abdel Basit El Khatim’s Boats Towards the North, a mixed media painting on irregularly jointed boards.

Osman, now aged 63, lectures at the Khartoum college, while El Khatim, more than a decade older at 75, is a former professor of graphic design there.

Exciting comment among visitors were a suite of drawings by the former head of painting at Khartoum, Kamala Ishaq, now in her late 70s. These deliberately simple pieces, pared to their tonal essentials and featuring an occasional thick velvety line, speak of generations of the struggle by women to have their voices recognised in Islamic societies.

Salah Elmur, a regular visitor to Nairobi, finds his inspiration in the charming individual and family portraits taken in photo booths, which he presents in typical faux naïf style. His Pages of the Photo Albums II— a 150cm by 100cm acrylic on canvas of eight heads (two of them babes in arms) is a classic of his oeuvre.

Among the younger artists, Elhassan Elmountasir, in his early 30s, shows a willingness to break away from the formal style, once learnt, of his Khartoum professors.

He ventures into an open, airy form of neo-expressionism with newspaper headlines and a pointed extract from a guide to Khartoum, collaged onto a free-spirited background of grey, off-white and magenta onto which is heaped a tumble of colourful blocks supervised by a strange figure, half bird, half dog, telling of the chaos we find in our daily lives.

Other exciting finds are the clay figures of Laila Mukhtar (now in her late 40s). Currently showing similar pieces in the third edition of the Contemporary Arab Art exhibition in Qatar, the ones here are in various sizes around the 20cm mark, each decorated in bold black, white and ochre. Called People of Nok, they reference the small terracotta figures of people and animals from the Nok culture of northern and central Nigeria, some of which are more than 2,000 years old.

Thus Mukhtar is demonstrably synthesising the Arab and sub-Saharan cultures of her divided country, exemplifying Salah Hassan’s observation that Sudanese artists are now striving to become focal points for a new national consciousness.