Waqialla was part of a group of Sudanese artists, later to be known as the Khartoum School, who wanted to avoid Western art concepts and were searching for a new artistic identity, drawn from their own culture and heritage. By this, he was one of the first artists of the 20th century to explore modern forms of Arabic calligraphy,Zuhur, S., Colors of Enchantment: Theater, Dance, Music, and the Visual Arts of the Middle East, American University in Cairo Press, 2001, p. 374 integrating African cultural and Islamic visual traditions into contemporary Sudanese compositions. He used Arabic letter forms and filled the space between them with splashes of colour.Lindgren, A. and Ross, S., The Modernist World, Routledge, 2015, p. 495 This use of calligraphy within a non-religious artwork places Waquialla within the Hurufiyah Art Movement (also known as the Al-hurufiyyah movement or the North African Letterist movement).Masters, Christopher, A-Z Great Modern Artists, Hachette UK, 2015, p. 56
