Our exhibition takes its title from this painting. Two girls in prayer utter the phrase, “Leave the bones and catch the land,” a translation of the Dinka phrase (Waan ku yom ku dom ku baai), a call to move beyond the pain of tragic loss and embrace the world of the living.

During this war people have been killed. When you go now to Southern Sudan you will see the bloodshed like a bone all over the place because of the war. So people now try to pray to God, to pray for peace and also to protect them in another way.

When people die for the right…people still remember them because they died because important thing…So that’s why they say let the people die for our freedom – let them go for peace, needs to be proud for their land, whenever you get independent of some kind. So people are not dying because of right, now in the war, people are not dying because of this philosophy... They die because of the war and some other things. So that’s why they try to say it in prophetic way.

Daniel Kuany

[This painting] could be related to the statement that Ngundeng made one time. He was mobilizing his forces and he was telling them that we lost a lot of people and we have to keep fighting and we are going to lose many more people. But in the end it is important to us to control our land because if we lost the land, you cannot go to another country and ask people to give you the land. But if you lost people one time, when there is peace, people can get married and they can have kids…Our land is very important; we lost a lot of people and we still need to keep our land.

Franco Majok