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Salah Elmur’s The Land of the Sun: A Powerful Fusion of Art, Memory, and Resistance

Salah Elmur’s The Land of the Sun: A Powerful Fusion of Art, Memory, and Resistance January 31, 2025Art Events, Mexico0 Comments

Salah Elmur’s The Land of the Sun: A Vision of Memory, Identity, and Resistance

In a world where history is often rewritten, Salah Elmur paints to remember. His latest exhibition, The Land of the Sun, opening in Mexico City from February 4 to May 3, 2025, is more than just a collection of paintings – it is an act of preservation, an artistic testimony to the landscapes, people, and traditions of Sudan, Egypt, and beyond.

For Elmur, painting is storytelling. His work pulses with memories of Khartoum, where he grew up along the banks of the Nile, weaving together childhood nostalgia with the weight of history. His portraits – deeply expressive, dreamlike, yet eerily political – transcend geographical borders. Whether depicting fishermen at work, processions of market vendors, or animals locked in silent communion with humans, his paintings evoke a world that is both deeply personal and universally resonant.

Salah Elmur, The Narrow Road, 2024. – Courtesy of the artist and Mariane Ibrahim

A Tapestry of Time and Identity

One of the highlights of the exhibition, The Road to the Fish Market (2024), captures a recurring motif in Elmur’s work: the liminal space between tradition and transformation. Here, fishermen carrying their catch seem almost ritualistic, as if part of an ancient rite. The duality of their existence – laborers yet storytellers, grounded in reality yet floating in an almost mythical atmosphere – speaks to Elmur’s masterful ability to balance allegory with authenticity. His fragmented compositions, double-faced figures, and surreal arrangements of bodies echo Cubism, yet are deeply rooted in African and Middle Eastern artistic traditions.

Salah Elmur, The Yellow Wall, 2024. Courtesy of the artist and Mariane Ibrahim

The dialogue between humans and animals, another recurring theme in Elmur’s universe, reaches poetic heights in works like Rabbit Performers (2024) and The Yellow Wall (2024). Here, the boundaries between species blur, suggesting a world where nature and humanity coexist in a delicate equilibrium – a nod to animist beliefs and ancestral wisdom that still shape the cultural fabric of Sudan.

A Cross-Continental Connection with Diego Rivera

What makes The Land of the Sun particularly powerful is its resonance with Mexico’s own artistic heritage. Elmur’s connection to Diego Rivera is unmistakable. Like Rivera, he is an artist of the people, portraying everyday laborers, market scenes, and postcolonial realities with both tenderness and an undercurrent of resistance. Both artists use their canvases to chronicle the struggles and resilience of their nations, blending realism with a touch of the mystical.

Sudan and Mexico, though geographically distant, share deep-rooted histories of revolution, resilience, and cultural richness. This exhibition highlights the parallels between pre-colonial civilizations – the great pyramids of Mesoamerica and the Nile Valley – and the ways in which their contemporary identities continue to wrestle with the legacies of colonial rule.

Painting as Political Memory

Elmur’s work is imbued with a quiet, almost melancholic power. His figures, with their penetrating gazes, reflect the contradictions of a postcolonial world – loyalty and betrayal, hope and disillusionment, faith and rebellion. In The Old Flag Wall (2024), a man stands before a wall imprinted with revolutionary fists, holding Sudan’s old flag. The image is haunting: a symbol of lost ideals, a country trapped between its past and an uncertain future.

Sudan, a land that has spent more years at war than at peace since its independence in 1956, looms large in Elmur’s work. Yet his paintings resist despair. Instead, they offer a visual archive of a disappearing world – one where community, ritual, and memory still hold weight.

The Land of the Sun: A Must-See Exhibition

More than just an exhibition, The Land of the Sun is a poetic, political, and deeply human reflection on belonging. Salah Elmur paints not only for himself but for those whose stories risk being forgotten. His work demands that we look, remember, and question the forces shaping our past and present.

For collectors, art enthusiasts, and cultural historians, this exhibition is unmissable. Whether you come for the striking compositions, the rich narrative depth, or the historical dialogue between Sudan and Mexico, one thing is certain: Salah Elmur’s vision will stay with you long after you leave the gallery.

Make sure to visit this exhibition from February 4 to May 3, 2025. This is a moment in contemporary art you won’t want to miss.

This exhibition will coincide with the gallery’s first participation at TEFAF Maastricht (Netherlands), from March 15 to 20, 2025, with a solo show featuring five recent monumental paintings by the artist.