We are excited to share that Salah Elmur, the artist's most comprehensive solo exhibition to date, will be held at Jameel Arts Centre in Dubai. Opening from October 31, 2026, through March 14, 2027, the exhibition is curated by Zain Al Saie and Qutouf Elobaid.
Bringing together paintings, archival photographs, sketches and ephemera, this exhibition offers an immersive encounter with Salah Elmur’s world, one where memory, landscape and identity merge and ripple through time. This show, focusing on works produced after 2018, traces the artist’s relationship with his homeland, Sudan, across years of distance and political upheaval.
Through vivid paintings that intertwine memory and myth, Elmur reflects on his upbringing near the Blue Nile, where industry, agriculture and the rhythms of daily life left enduring impressions that run through the exhibition’s social and political undercurrents. These paintings build upon the photographic legacy of his family’s Studio Kamal in Khartoum. Elmur repurposes archival images, offering subjects who are captured twice, once through film and again in painting, a new way of being seen. Throughout, the artworkscarry the trace of his signature formal language, images that double and refract, mirroring Elmur’s own negotiation of distance and memory.
Organised across three chapters—To Appear Otherwise; Salt of the Earth; and Mourning Song—the exhibition moves through themes of family and archive, land and labour, and grief and shared histories.
