For a man who could plausibly claim to be the Arab world’s first major printmaker, the Sudanese American artist Mohammad Omer Khalil cuts a surprisingly disarming figure. Casually dressed in a Scooby Doo bucket hat, he’s spry and lively at 90 years old, an eager storyteller who constantly gestures outwards with his large hands as he talks, as if he were trying to literally pass his knowledge onto you.
“I do people that I like, artists that I like, places I visit, books, and you know, poetry, cinema, music,” Khalil told Hell Gate about his subjects, as he stood before a wall of etchings. “So I have a lot of points to jump from one to the other. I never think about anything, just do it.”
I met Khalil at the Blackburn Study Center within the Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop, currently on the second floor of the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts in the Garment District. The artist has spent the last 60 years coming to this storied cooperative studio, following it from location to location as tight finances forced it to close in one place and reopen in another. Much like the studio, Khalil has held on through the years in a city that loves to tout its commitment to art while becoming unaffordable for all but the richest artists. He’s survived by printing the works of other artists here, all while earning more acclaim and influence for his own work in the Middle East, Africa, and Europe than in the city he calls home.
