Emirati artist Salama Al Mazrouei has spent much of her career painting people. But after years devoted to realistic portraiture, she began looking for ways to push the form in new directions.
Gold leaf, magazines, traditional fabrics and other materials associated with Emirati heritage began appearing in her work. Realistically rendered figures remained at the centre, while the spaces around them became more layered, incorporating patterned surfaces, foliage and stylised elements.
“I felt I had spent many years working with realistic portraiture, so I wanted to bring in some new ideas,” Al Mazrouei tells The National. “I wanted to approach these subjects in a more innovative way while ultimately still expressing Emirati heritage.”
It is an approach that is increasingly taking her work beyond the UAE.
The visual artist is preparing for international exhibitions including one in Paris this year and at the XVI Florence Biennale in Italy in 2027. Her career has included more than 100 exhibitions and artistic events in the UAE and abroad.
A fine arts graduate of United Arab Emirates University and member of the Emirates Fine Arts Society, Al Mazrouei works in oil painting and mixed media, with a practice drawing on Emirati identity, memory, femininity and belonging.
Her interest in portraiture began early. She started painting at about 14 or 15, before studying art at UAE University while also taking additional courses privately and with groups. Her first exhibition took place while she was still a student, after the university decided to show her work, followed by an exhibition at Abu Dhabi's Cultural Foundation.
Portraits remained central to her practice, but over time she became interested in what could happen when realism was placed alongside different materials, textures and techniques.
“I combine abstraction with realism and mixed media,” she says. “The paintings can begin one way and end up somewhere completely different. There is a plan, but by the end that plan can change and something else emerges.”
Al Mazrouei's recent work shows that she has not abandoned portraiture so much as expanded what can happen around it.
An Emirati woman, traditional clothing or jewellery might provide the starting point, but the aim is not simply to repeat familiar representations of heritage.
The work she is preparing for Florence pushes that approach further.
She contacted the biennale to ask about participating and, after organisers saw her work, received approval the same day. The work explores what she describes as layers of life in the UAE. It began with raw, unprimed canvas, which she coloured herself before building up different materials across the surface.
“It represents life in the UAE, but in a non-traditional way,” Al Mazrouei says. “Every area of the painting contains something different from the section above it.”
The process also pushed her towards materials she had not previously imagined using.
When the works travel internationally, cultural references often become starting points for conversations.
An exhibition in Innsbruck, she recalls, revealed how little some visitors knew about the UAE beyond Dubai. They asked about Abu Dhabi, the clothing and jewellery in her paintings, and whether such traditions belonged only to the past.
Visitors also asked about the UAE's artists, exhibitions and art fairs, prompting her to speak about Abu Dhabi Art and Art Dubai.
“I want them to see the level that we have reached in art generally,” Al Mazrouei says. “I want them to see how far we have come.”
After more than two decades in the local art scene, she has also turned her attention to how younger Emirati artists are developing.
She has noticed a strong movement towards digital art, and has acknowledged it as an artistic form alongside photography and crafts. She believes emerging artists can also benefit from working with physical materials.
“If you do not put your hands into the work, into the paint, hold a brush and physically work with it, I feel that is real art,” Al Mazrouei says.
Her broader advice is for artists to move beyond subjects that have become familiar within local exhibitions, including conventional portraiture. “There should be documentation of the present moment. There should be documentation of the lives we are living and of heritage places but approached in non-traditional ways.”
The artist believes exhibitions can sometimes become dominated by portraits or depictions of horses, leaving less room to experiment with subject matter and presentation.
The portrait remains the anchor of Al Mazrouei’s work, but it is no longer the limit. Traditional dress, jewellery and other markers of Emirati identity now sit alongside abstraction, pattern and mixed media, allowing familiar subjects to take on new forms.
“Move beyond those ideas and make something new,” she says. “Something different from what is already common.”
