Mohammad Omer Khalil: Common Ground
March 28 - May 31, 2026
Opening Reception: Saturday, March 28, 3-6PM
Mohammad Omer Khalil with his work Petra VIII (1994). Photo: Samoel González.
JOINT VENUES
Twelve Gates Arts: April 3 - May 15
Arab American National Museum, Dearborn: March 28 - May 31
Maqam Studios, Brooklyn: Starts April 26
Jay Seven Inc., Brooklyn: March 28 - May 31
Over the next three years, the Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop will foreground its international connections through Global Impressions a programming initiative that builds on Blackburn’s legacy of solidarity with artists from the Global South, showing how print has functioned as both cultural resistance and diasporic exchange. Mohammad Omer Khalil, Common Ground curated by Amina Ahmed and Jenna Hamed is the first iteration of Global Impressions series, to be held at the Blackburn Study Center, a space dedicated to the history and legacy of Robert Blackburn.
Programs at the Blackburn Study Center is made possible with major support from Teiger Foundation. Mohammad Omer Khalil: Common Ground is also supported by The Jenni Crain Foundation, an initiative dedicated to preserving the legacy of the esteemed artist and curator.
Blackburn Study Center
Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop
323 West 39th Street, New York, NY 10018
WED - SUN 12 - 7PM
After Khalil’s arrival in New York in 1967, the Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop emerged as a crucial artistic home for him at a time when there were few spaces in the city where non-white artists could exhibit their work. Upon meeting Blackburn in 1969, he joined the workshop and entered a community grounded in collaborative printmaking, mentorship, and mutual support—a context that would inspire Khalil to form his own studio in 1970. It was also Blackburn who invited Khalil to the Asilah Cultural Moussem in Morocco in 1978, a burgeoning residency program committed, as Jenna Hamed writes, to “delink[ing] from elitist and inaccessible art programming organized for the privileged few in Western societies, and to assert a ‘common ground’ for ‘Third World’ artists, intellectuals, and poets to connect with their counterparts from the ‘other world.’” ¹
For the next fifty years, Khalil continued to live between Asilah and New York, running the printshop for nearly three decades and working with artists from across the globe, which reinforced his commitment to collaboration, pedagogy, and printmaking as a shared language. Common Ground takes its title from Khalil’s series of fifteen etchings produced between 1985 and 1995 that gather the light and color of the Moroccan coastal town of Asilah into dense, atmospheric abstractions. These works trace a passage through the formative sites and experiences that shape his art: the landscapes of Sudan that left an enduring imprint; the classical etching techniques he refined in Florence; the transnational camaraderie forged through Asilah; and New York, where he raised his family, built a life in art, and continues to work today.
Across these locations, Khalil has not only been a practicing artist but also an influential teacher and master printer—leading workshops in Asilah while, in New York, founding his own printmaking atelier and teaching between 1973 and 2012 at Pratt Institute, The New School, Columbia University, and New York University. From this studio, Khalil produced editions for canonical artists including Louise Nevelson, Mavis Pusey, Camille Billops, Emma Amos, Norman Lewis, Sean Scully, Romare Bearden, Jim Dine, among others, contributing significantly to the history of contemporary printmaking. Yet despite his profound impact as a collaborator, educator, and bridge between artistic communities in Africa, Europe, and the U.S., Khalil has not received commensurate mainstream recognition for his artistic contributions.
Common Ground unfolds across multiple venues to mirror the wide reach of his “transcommunal” practice, one that both descends from and extends a lineage of printmakers devoted to the possibilities of etching and to rendering the full vibrancy and tonal range of Blackness.
1. Hamed, Jenna. “Walking a Common Ground: Mohammad Omer Khalil in Asilah.” 2023.
On view from March 28–May 31, Mohammad Omer Khalil: Common Ground is a survey exhibition of works by the New York-based Sudanese artist and master printmaker Mohammed Omer Khalil (b.1936), widely recognized as the first major printmaker from the Arab world. Curated by Amina Ahmed and Jenna Hamed in partnership with the Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop, the exhibition presents a selection of his paintings and printed works spanning six decades, employing collage and offering tribute to the scenes, sounds and syntax influential to Khalil’s visual language.
The multi-venue and multi-city exhibition unfolds across five partner venues including the Blackburn Study Center (New York), Twelve Gates Arts (Philadelphia), Arab American National Museum (Dearborn), Maqām Studio (Brooklyn) and Jay Seven Inc (Brooklyn), alongside a robust series of programs and workshops in partnership with The Africa Center, Anthology Film Archives, Pratt Institute and the Queens Museum.
The exhibition is accompanied by a print catalogue featuring essays from the co-curators alongside Dr. Bayan Abubakr, Sudanese historian at Yale Universiry; Omar Berrada, writer, curator, and Director of Dar al-Ma'mûn, Marrakech; Amir ElSaffar, jazz trumpeter and vocalist; Jennifer Farrell, Curator of Drawings and Prints at the Metropolitan Museum of Art; Tumelo Mosaka, Curator in African American and African Diaspora Studies at Columbia University; Navina Najat Haidar, Curator of Islamic Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art; Ben Rejali, Editor of Khabar Keslan; Olivia Shao, Curator at the Drawing Center and Khalil’s former student; Ksenia Nouril, Assistant Director of the International Program at the Museum of Modern Art; and Sumesh Sharma, Founder of the Clark House Initiative, Mumbai.
Khalil is known for his work fusing Sudanese visual traditions, European classical training, influenced by a life lived between Morocco and New York. Trained in Khartoum, Sudan and later in Florence, Italy in fresco and etching, Khalil translates this rigorous foundation into atmospheric, abstract compositions that explore the interplay of light and dark, color and pattern. His images often incorporate found and everyday materials—postage stamps, envelopes, fabrics, crushed cans—alongside literary, art-historical, and pop-cultural references, such as a series of homages to the legendary Egyptian singer Oum Kalthum. These elements form mosaic-like surfaces in which symbols dissolve into pattern and re-emerge, echoing the slippage between memory and forgetting, the personal and the collective.
JOINT VENUES
Twelve Gates Arts, Philadelphia: April 3 - May 15
Twelve Gates Arts in Philadelphia exhibits Khalil’s work paying homage to Sudan, featuring a selection of collage paintings from the Suakin series alongside a portfolio of etchings made after Tayeb Salih’s novel, Season of Migration to the North (1966). twelvegatesarts.org - 106 N 2nd St, Philadelphia, PA 19106
Arab American National Museum, Dearborn: March 28 - May 31
Arab American National Museum in Dearborn shows a selection of collage paintings and printed works inspired by his travels between Sudan and Morocco. The installation includes a selection of historical ephemera on Khalil’s life and work alongside a soundscape of Khalil’s oral history and recording of Oum Kalthum’s album, both of which are sourced from the Museum’s archives. arabamericanmuseum.org - 13624 Michigan Ave, Dearborn, MI 48126
Jay Seven Inc., Brooklyn: March 28 - May 31
Jay Seven Inc. in Brooklyn stages an interactive research archive featuring a curated selection of books, music, prints and ephemera that trace the influences and making of Khalil’s paintings and printed works. jayseveninc.com - 113 S 6th St APT 2, Brooklyn, NY 11249
Maqām Studios Brooklyn: Starts April 26
Maqām Studio in Brooklyn features a special presentation of a painting from Khalil’s Oum Kalthum series, accompanied by live performances from local musicians. maqamstudio.com
PROGRAMMING
Blackburn Study Center
Wednesday, April 22, 7 PM
Sudanese contemporary rhythm, connecting East African retro-pop and African American Pentatonic fusion and energy. Performed by Alsarah.
323 West 39th Street, NYC 10018
Maqām Studios
Sunday, April 26, 3 PM
A musical tribute to Oum Kalthum's classical masterpieces, “Ruba῾iyyat al-Khayyam,” based on the 13th-century quatrains of the Persian poet Omar Khayyam, and “Hakam ῾Alayna al-Hawa,” the final song she performed in 1973.
RSVP link will be added shortly.
Blackburn Study Center
Tuesday, April 28, 10 AM
Study Day, in partnership with Pratt Institute
323 West 39th Street, NYC 10018
Queens Museum
Sunday, May 17
Reflections from the World Fair: A Print Workshop
Flushing Meadows Corona Park, Building, Corona, NY 11368
Anthology Film Archives
Monday–Tuesday, May 18–19
Film Screenings, TBA
32 2nd Ave, New York, NY 10003
The Africa Center
Saturday, May 23
Africa Day Drop-In Activities
1280 5th Ave, New York, NY 10029
Blackburn Study Center
Saturday, May 30, 12 PM
Reading with New York-based Sudanese poets: Daad Sharfi, Dalia Elhassan, Mayada Ibrahim, Mohammed Zenia
Arab American National Museum
Wednesday, March 25, 6 PM
Opening Reception
Blackburn Study Center
Saturday, March 28, 3 - 6PM
Opening Reception
323 West 39th Street, NYC 10018
Blackburn Study Center
Wednesday, April 1, 7 PM
The Longest River in the World: Limitless Possibility of Nile Melodies. 'Golden Era' music of Sudanese and Egyptian music performed by Zekkereya El-Magharbel and Kweku Sumbry.
323 West 39th Street, NYC 10018
Twelve Gates Arts
Friday, April 3, 6 PM
Opening Reception
106 N 2nd St, Philadelphia, PA 19106
Blackburn Study Center
Tuesday, April 7, 2 PM
Walkthrough and Conversation with Mohammad Omer Khalil, in partnership with the International Fine Print Dealers Association (IFPDA).
323 West 39th Street, NYC 10018
Twelve Gates Arts
Saturday, April 11
Monotype Workshop with Jazmine Catasús
106 N 2nd St, Philadelphia, PA 19106
