Nour El Saleh (b. 1997, Beirut) is an artist whose works explore notions of place, selective and relative memory. Through her paintings, she invites us into alternate worlds of humanoid creatures that uncomfortably engage with one another in overly charged environments. Working instinctively, without creating studies, bodies; animal and humanoid, appear on the surface, where they indiscriminately meld into each other and are inseparable from the land they inhabit. El Saleh’s paintings enable her to consider the existence of a hypothetical ecosystem where skin is translucent, and the ground is in a cycle of renewal. Through this, she delves into her selective consciousness, utilising paint to access those fantastical worlds which can be invasively personal for both the viewer and the artist. The spaces she creates challenge the extremities of passion, repulsion, structure and obsession while re-interpreting the role of aesthetic beauty and ugliness. 

El Saleh holds a BA in Fine Arts from the Slade School of Fine Art (2019) and an MA from The Royal Drawing School (2022).

Solo exhibitions include ‘A Thousand Good Mornings’ (with Benjamin Orlow), Des Bains, London (2024); ‘Apply Gently’, Quench Gallery, Margate (2023); ‘Underfoot’, Edel Assanti, UK (2022); ‘Set to Default’, Castello di San Basilio (2022); ‘Where the Grass is Synthetic’, V.O Curations, London (2021); ‘Clouds of Venom’, Plaza Plaza, London (2021); ‘The Play That Goes on Forever with Lowell Ryan Projects’, Zona Maco, Mexico City (2020); ‘Exquisite Farces’, V.O Curations, London (2019). Her works have been featured in group exhibitions including ‘Tightrope’, Cassina Projects, Italy (2022) and ‘Figurative NOW’, Daniel Benjamin Gallery, London (2018).

El Saleh has completed residencies at Dumfries House, Scotland (2023); Castello San Basilio, Italy (2022); Palazzo Monti, Italy (2022); V.O Curations, London (2019).