Salah El Mur

Salah Elmur’s (Khartoum, Sudan, b.1966) work is composed of a fertile visual vocabulary that draws on his social and cultural heritage. He draws on his observations of life and memories of his childhood and youth for the scenes, situations and impressions that he depicts in his work. Heavy symbolism, a tendency towards vivid colour combinations, and distortion of natural figures and proportions are some of the markers of Elmur’s painting.

Inspired by the many photographs he has collected from his family’s photography studio, Elmur’s paintings often emulate formal portrait settings with additional elements that complement but also unsettle the mood in his paintings. Plants and animals share the frame with the human subjects, limbs are shortened and proportions are distorted, altering the relationships between various objects and figures in the frame. All these elements are combined in a somewhat surrealistic swirl of memory, and the resulting paintings are tender, intimate vignettes of human relationships, the rituals and poetry of daily life and folklore.

COLLECTIONS

Le Centre Pompidou, Paris, France
Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minneapolis, USA
Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa (MOCAA), Cape Town, South Africa
Frederick R. Weisman Art Museum, Minneapolis, USA
The Bunker Artspace, West Palm Beach, USA
CCH Pounder, New Orleans, USA
Museum of African Contemporary Art, Al Maaden, Marrakesh, Morocco
Sharjah Art Museum, Sharjah, UAE
Sharjah Art Foundation, Sharjah, UAE
CC Pounder Collection, New Orleans,USA
Fondation H, Antananarivo, Madagascar