Jameel Arts Centre in Dubai presents Salah Elmur: Just as the Heart of a Mango is a Stone, a solo exhibition by the Sudanese artist Salah Elmur. It runs from 31 October 2026 to 14 March 2027. Curated by Zain Al Saie and Qutouf Elobaid, it concentrates on works made after 2018, setting paintings beside archival photographs, sketches and ephemera in the centre's galleries. Elmur was born in Khartoum in 1966 and is based in Cairo.

The exhibition unfolds in three chapters titled To Appear Otherwise, Salt of the Earth and Mourning Song. Across them, the venue lists the themes as family and archive, land and labour, and shared histories of grief. The paintings build on photographs from Studio Kamal, the studio his family ran in Khartoum. Elmur reuses these archival images so that his subjects are, in the venue's phrase, "captured twice, once through film and again in painting". The centre also ties the paintings to his childhood beside the Blue Nile, with its farms, industry and daily routines. It points as well to years spent at a distance from Sudan, through political upheaval.

In Fire Behind the Mountain (2025), a figure dressed in black sits on a brown horse and holds up two hand mirrors that repeat the face. Clouds cross the sky, a small fire burns on a low hill and a fragment on the ground shows a horse's head. Images that double and refract recur across the paintings. Mariane Ibrahim, which has represented Elmur since 2024, describes a show in which, in its words, "the self is split and mutated". The gallery traces this through damaged images, alter egos and displacement, and through the way exile has reshaped his sense of where he belongs.

Elmur graduated in graphic design from Sudan University in Khartoum in 1989. Earlier solo exhibitions include Fragrances of the Forest and Photos at Sharjah Art Museum (2018) and Studio Kamal at Circle Art Gallery in Nairobi (2019). In 2025 The Land of the Sun opened at Mariane Ibrahim in Mexico City. The exhibition opens on Saturday 31 October 2026 with a talk in the Lobby from 5pm. The artist speaks with Melissa Gronlund, editor of the monograph Salah Elmur: Ten Seasons, about his practice, his life and the works on view. Entry is free.