Art Jameel, an organisation that supports artists and creative communities, presents Salah Elmur: Just as the Heart of a Mango is a Stone, a major solo exhibition at Jameel Arts Centre, Dubai’s hub for contemporary art and ideas. On view from 1 November to 14 March 2027 in Galleries 4-8 on the museum’s First Floor, the exhibition brings together paintings, archival photographs, sketches and ephemera spanning the last decade of his practice, alongside loans from major regional and international collections, including the Sharjah Art Foundation Collection and the Saudi Museum of Contemporary Art (SAMoCA). The solo exhibition is rooted in the photographic legacy of the artist’s family studio, Studio Kamal, in Khartoum. Elmur is deeply engaged with Sudanese cultural heritage, with a practice that resonates with the pioneering spirit of the Khartoum School and modernist movements across African and Arab diasporas. His compositions blend figurative abstraction with familial themes and offer an immersive encounter with his world, where memory, landscape and identity merge and ripple through time. Together, the works trace his evolving relationship with his homeland, Sudan, across years of distance and political upheaval.
Elmur’s vivid paintings intertwine memory and myth, drawing on his upbringing near the Blue Nile in Khartoum. Archival images are repurposed and reimagined, with subjects captured twice: once through the camera, then again through paint, offering them a new way of being seen. Throughout, the artworks carry 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. The exhibition is curated by Art Jameel curators Zain Al Saie and Qutouf Elobaid.
Nora Razian, Art Jameel Deputy Director and Head of Exhibitions and Programmes, said: “Salah Elmur is a monumental figure in Sudanese art, with a practice that has resonated across generations and geographies. We are proud to stage this major solo exhibition, bringing his practice into sustained focus at the scale and depth it deserves. At Art Jameel, we are committed to spotlighting and supporting artists whose work speaks to histories and lived experiences of our region, and whose practices have been a beacon of influence to artists and cultural practitioners
Press release from Jameel Arts Centre
Image: Salah Elmur. The Road to the Fish Market. 2024. Detail. Acrylic on canvas. Image courtesy of the artist
