Salah Elmur

Salah Elmur’s (b. 1966, Khartoum, Sudan; lives and works in Cairo, Egypt) artistic journey is deeply entwined with Sudanese cultural heritage, resonating with the pioneering spirit of the Khartoum School and modernist movements within African and Arab diasporas. Inspired by his upbringing near the Blue Nile in Khartoum, Elmur’s work reflects the rich history of Sudanese culture.  

His fascination with photography, nurtured in his father’s studio, infuses his paintings with the nostalgia of 1960s Sudanese portrait photography. The narratives in his paintings blend lived experience with folklore and collective memory. Depicting human figures and animals in earthy landscapes, Elmur highlights the connections between man and nature, invented and organic forms, individual and collective experience, combining figurative abstraction with familial themes to reflect the multiplicities of Sudanese life. Emerging from the socio-political landscape of 1960s and 70s Sudan, his artistic repertoire serves as a testament to the era’s post-colonial ethos, harmonizing with geometric post-modernist aesthetics to immortalize his heritage and shape a multifaceted visual identity that echoes through time. Salah Elmur is also a children's book author and illustrator, who has published several books in this genre.  

Elmur has had prominent solo exhibitions internationally, including at the French Cultural Centre, Khartoum, Sudan (2002); the Sudanese National Museum, Khartoum, Sudan (2006); the African Cultural Centre, Washington, DC (2012); Fragrances of the Forest and Photos, Sharjah Art Museum, Sharjah, UAE (2018); The Land of the Sun, Mariane Ibrahim, Mexico City, Mexico (2025); and, more recently, Just as the Heart of a Mango is a Stone, Jameel Arts Centre, Dubai, UAE (2026). 

His work has been shown in group exhibitions at the Goethe Institute (Nairobi, Kenya), Sharjah Contemporary Art Museum (Sharjah, UAE), Agha Khan Cultural Center (Stone Town, Zanzibar), The British Museum (London, UK), Hong Gah Museum (Taipei, Taiwan), Cameron Art Museum (Wilmington, NC), Musée Rath (Geneva, Switzerland).  

His work finds a home in esteemed collections worldwide, such as the Museum of Modern Art (New York, NY), the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art (Washington D.C), the Musée National d’Art Moderne, Centre Pompidou (Paris, France), the Minneapolis Institute of Art (Minneapolis, MN), the Zeitz MOCAA (Cape Town, South Africa), the Sharjah Art Museum (Sharjah, UAE), the Gandur Foundation for Art (Geneva, Switzerland), the Museum of African Contemporary Art Al Maaden (Marrakech, Morocco) and the North Dakota Museum of Art (Grand Forks, ND).