born in Beirut, Lebanon, 1997
lives and works in London
Nour El Saleh’s practice explores notions of place, fantasy and selective/relative memory. With a multimedia approach, centred in painting, she creates worlds through large scale canvases, drawings, miniature sculptures and kinetic/interactive structures. Working instinctively without prior planning, her process relies on cumulative change to bring together staggering narratives and segmented realities.
Compositions come together as an amalgamation of questions and imagined scenarios which embrace the fluidity of meaning and challenge the existence of an overarching system. Bodies in extremis; animal and humanoid, appear on the surface, where they indiscriminately meld into each other, engaging in physical conversations using their elongated limbs and exaggerated faces. Theatre theory influences the configuration of planes, translating ideas through the hypothetical.The reoccurring use of the ugly and the grotesque mediates what may appear as an alternative approach to beauty; where giant body parts provide protection, slits and openings in the flesh act as a portal to travel inwards and wrinkles become pockets, hiding smaller details.
Nour el Saleh completed her postgraduate degree from The Royal Drawing School in 2022 after receiving a BFA at the Slade School of Fine Art in 2019 and has recently exhibited at Xxijra Hii, London (2025), Gnyp Gallery, Berlin (2025), Cassina Projects, Milan (2025), General Expenses, Mexico city (2024) Des Bains, UK (2024), Xxijra Hii, UK (2023), Quench Gallery, UK (2023), Edel Assanti, UK (2022), Castello di San Basillio, Italy (2022), Cassina Projects, Italy (2022), Christies, London (2022), Plaza Plaza, UK (2021), V.O Curations, UK (2021); Lowell Ryan Projects, Mexico (2020); Kuva Gallery, Finland (2019); Daniel Benjamin Gallery, London (2018). She was recently in residence at Castello San Basilio, Italy (2022) Palazzo Monti, Italy (2022) and Dumfries House, Scotland (2023).
“Where The Grass is Synthetic” 2021 at V.O curations