Salmah Almansoori

Salmah Almansoori was born in 2001 in Ghayathi, in the Al Dhafra region of the United Arab Emirates, and is based in Abu Dhabi. She works in painting, site-specific installation, sculpture, ceramics, photography and video. She makes paper by hand from local palm fibres and desert grasses, then paints on it in watercolour or engraves it with a laser. Some works add spices or objects collected in Ghayathi.

Her work is rooted in Ghayathi. Her 2023 series of works Ghayathi records houses built in the 1980s in Abu Dhabi's western region, their kitchens, bedrooms and living rooms demolished. For Archiving Ghayathi: Memory, Material, and Place (2025), she laser-engraved her palm paper and drew on archival research and oral histories of the town. The installation Manara (2025) reimagines the fading ornament of Ghayathi's Islamic architecture, drawing on minaret and lantern forms. She describes working "through texture, repetition, and acts of reconstruction".

Almansoori holds a BFA in Visual Arts from Zayed University, Abu Dhabi (2023). Solo shows include Ghayathi at The Warehouse, Dubai (2023), Memories Are Home in Ventimiglia (2024) and Who I Become at Maraya Art Centre, Sharjah (2026). In 2025 she made The Weight of Absence as an Abu Dhabi Art Beyond commission and received a National Grant for Culture and Creativity. She is represented by Firetti Contemporary, Dubai.