Salmah Almansoori was featured in bayn/space in an interview titled What Remains, exploring how her artistic practice engages with place, memory, identity and the traces left behind by changing environments.
Born in Ghayathi, in Abu Dhabi’s Al Dhafra region, Almansoori reflects on how her hometown has shaped her understanding of place and belonging. Through the documentation of abandoned objects, demolished buildings and overlooked details, she examines how everyday surroundings hold personal and collective histories, and how these traces can reveal what is at risk of being forgotten.
Working across painting, photography, ceramics, sculpture, installation and handmade paper, Almansoori allows materials and places to guide her artistic process. Her recent material research incorporates palm fibres, desert grasses, recycled paper and discarded fabrics collected in Ghayathi, transforming overlooked materials into surfaces that carry the physical and emotional traces of their origins.
The bayn/space feature also explores the relationship between art and healing in Almansoori’s practice. Through acts of collecting, reconstructing and making, she approaches art as an ongoing process of engaging with memory rather than resolving it. Her work considers how places continue to shape identity, and how what remains can become a means of preserving histories, acknowledging change and maintaining a connection to home.
