R.E. has asked me to use her initials to keep her family safe.

The war in Khartoum started suddenly, just around the corner from their house, they fled and kept moving. R.E. was helped by one of the organisations she used to work for to get to London. She had survivors guilt from having escaped Sudan, but then found herself in a place where she felt unwanted. She has started volunteering for local charities in London, and has found a supportive community through that.

The words embroidered on the canvas read “I arrived in London in 2024. I was in an asylum hotel for a year until I got my visa. I love Sudan, I was happy there. One morning everything changed and my family had to leave our house with only the clothes we were wearing. The world closed its doors, we felt unwanted. There were attacks in the UK on asylum hotels, it was very scary. I was stuck, not willing to embrace my new life, then I heard a story about an uprooted tree which got carried downstream in a storm and started growing on another river bank, it was a turning point. I needed to grow elsewhere too. Life deserves to be lived. Borders are a human concept, migration is natural and Sudanese women are super resilient.”

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Oil and hand embroidery on linen canvas.

2026