Salah Elmur: Just as the Heart of a Mango is a Stone

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 November 1 2026 to March 14 2027 in Galleries 4-8 on the museum’s First Floor, the exhibition will be preceded by a public preview on October 31, from 5:00pm to 8:00pm, featuring a conversation on Elmur's practice led by Melissa Gronlund and a performance by musician Asim Eltayeb Gurashi.

Bringing together paintings, archival photographs, sketches and ephemera spanning the last decade of Elmur's practice, alongside loans from major regional and international collections, including the Sharjah Art Foundation Collection and the Saudi Museum of Contemporary Art (SAMoCA), the exhibition offers a layered exploration of the artist's visual language.

Rooted in the photographic legacy of the artist’s family studio, Studio Kamal, in Khartoum, Elmur's practice is deeply engaged with Sudanese cultural heritage and 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.

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.