On my last day in Madrid, I was recommended by my aunt to attend a pop art exhibition in La Casa Arabé. I went there with no expectations at all, as I wasn’t really familiar with the pop art concept. Luckily, I was far from disappointed.
The exhibition proved to be fascinating, displaying the art work of 19 young North African artists. The work was a combination of visual and audio impressions that represented the rich and diverse Arab-African culture of the region. The artists celebrated their local identity in modern-day society of consumerism and globalisation.
One of the instillations that grabbed my attention was Bint el Sudan (the daughter of Sudan), done by the Egyptian artist Amado Alfadni. The instillation had a few bottles of Bint el Sudan perfume with a sample sprayed on a piece of fabric glued to the wall. One of the reasons for choosing this perfume was nostalgia. The smell reminded the artist of his Sudanese mother and many others. Even more, the perfume had an interesting history that’s unknown to many. It was developed in 1920 by an English man called Eric Burgess who worked as a tea boy in the WJ Bush company in Khartoum.
One day while hanging out with his colleagues in the tea shop, he was presented with different aromatic oil vials and was asked by the locals to mix them into a perfume. Burgess took the oils back with him to the laboratory in London and six months later, Bint el Sudan was born. He was also behind the iconic image of the label that had a topless tribal young woman wearing a traditional elephant-hair red skirt with bracelets on her wrists and ankles; and a dowry purse around her neck. This was considered the first perfume advertisement campaign in history.
Bint el Sudan failed to sell in Europe because of its intense aroma but was an instant hit in Africa. In the 1970’s almost 5.7 million bottles of the perfume were sold and it was called: “The Chanel No 5 of Africa”. Its biggest factory is in Kano, Nigeria that started in 1952 and counted for 80 per cent of production. However, the rise of Boko Haram managed to reduce it to 50 per cent which devastated the whole economic system.
The perfume became part of Sudanese rituals such as circumcision and weddings. It was also used as a bath and a massage oil, thanks to its mixture of jasmine, lilac and white lilies. But as politics changed in Sudan, so did the perfume. After the military coup in 1989 that brought General Omar al Bashir to power, the Islamic regime era started in Sudan and lasted for 30 years. Bashir’s campaign encouraged women to become modest and more “fair Arab looking”, which caused discrimination against native women with darker skin.
In 2017, Sudan had imported skin whitening products worth of 300 million euros - which 70 per cent of Sudanese women used. The changes reached the timeless icon of Bint el Sudan and now – like everyone else - she was modestly covered and with a fairer skin. In the spring of 2019 while the Sudanese were demonstrating against Bashir’s regime another iconic image rose in the form of Alaa Salah, the 22-year-old protester in her national uniform reciting poems and chanting slogans. She inspired Alfadni, who found in her the new modern icon of Bint el Sudan. His instillation of perfume replicas not only illustrates the history of the perfume, but also the cultural and political changes that the Sudanese society went through. He quotes: “I’m intending to represent the image of Sudan, leaving on the side all anger and extremism.”
(Rasha al Raisi is a certified skills trainer and the author of: The World According to Bahja. rashabooks@yahoo.com)
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