Mohammad Sultan: Uncovering the Yesteryear of Libya

Mohammad Sultan describes his obsession with Libyan cultural objects as both financially irresponsible and borderline concerning, but the result has become a meeting point for anyone curious about the country’s history and heritage: @vintagelibya. Home to everything from vintage photos and pop culture snapshots to antique collectibles, the Instagram account is as personal as it was predestined.

Living abroad and watching live cancellations of dictators, the British-Libyan archivist’s material obsession began as a child, as his household exposed him to the various interconnected histories that emblemised history. Sultan’s trips to the Spanish region of Andalusia in particular stayed with him—he’d leave with a strange and lingering longing to uncover the ruins and remains of a culture he recognised there. 

Sultan’s family played a prominent role in his exposure and relationship to his heritage, and his wonder with the world around him. His greatest inspiration, he says, is his grandfather: “He was famous for his love of reading and extensive library, which was sadly lost during the 2014 conflict in Benghazi. Sometimes, I feel like my need to collect and document is an unconscious effort to reclaim that lost library, a metaphor for Libya’s history.” 

When speaking to the archivist, it is clear that his relationship to Libya is steered by his relationship with his family. In that way, his work – despite being an archive – engages in a living and breathing way. It bridges the past and the present, similar to the way that Sultan is bridging his experience and work to that of his father and grandfather.

With an ultimate goal to uncover and present Libyan history to the world, which he felt not enough people were doing, Sultan uses the intimate, ephemeral, and quiet products of life to do so. A grandfather’s unreturned borrowed library book from the 1960s, a great-grandmother’s silver jewellery sold by her husband to fund a failing business, a coloniser’s collection of 35mm glass slides from the 1950s—regardless of the object in question, Sultan’s process of storytelling is underpinned by a yearning for lived reality and a breathing history.

A conversion with this collector reveals that his relationship to his work is as dynamic as the work itself. Constantly reflecting, researching, and connecting, he defines his work as a process of realisation both for himself and a broader community. He is deeply proud of the fact that his archive has had an impact, connecting him to creatives who live in Libya. To him, this is the platform’s greatest achievement. “It has helped revive and reintroduce forgotten symbols, jewellery, textiles, and architecture, inspiring a new wave of Libyan and non-Libyan creatives ranging from artists and designers to researchers and digital storytellers,” he reflects. 

This achievement is not only personal, but contributes to a broader goal of redefining history as one that has not been conditioned through a western praxis of Libyan history. Continuing to discover hidden artefacts of the Libyan experience, Sultan and @vintagelibya are opening doors unto the power of material memory and what it entails for a future that demands reclaiming narratives and recovering what was lost.