السواد ذكرى البحر الأحمر - Black Memory Red Sea by nouf saleh engages with themes of secrecy, kinship, displacement, separation, and memory within Afro-Arab communities, particularly those of the Yemeni Muwalladeen. This body of work serves as a subtle act of resistance against the erasure of Afro-Arab histories and identities. Drawing from her family archive, saleh uses personal experience as a lens to explore broader social, geographical, and historical narratives.
In Arab, Yemeni, and mixed cultures, secrecy functions as a survival tool. saleh’s work explores how this secrecy shapes communities while navigating the creative challenge of portraying family and self in ways that respect both privacy and truth. This dynamic tension deeply influences her form and material choices.
saleh employs neon, cedar wood, large-scale structures, sound, direct geographic references, repetition, and familial imagery to evoke cultural connections. In Goree, Ethiopia, an architectural cedar wood structure rises above human scale, its minimal form supported by skeletal elements inspired by Yemeni Architecture. At the top, two cyanotype images of her grandparents, whom she has never met, face each other. These images, representing a connection nourished through a single photograph, appear omnipresent yet unreachable, reflecting the distance and longing within familial bonds. Throughout the exhibition, repetition and familial imagery reinforce enduring patterns of memory and kinship, creating visual narratives that are both profoundly personal and commonly familiar.
For this exhibition, saleh brings together works previously shown individually over the past several years. Now, presented in the same space, these pieces engage in an emerging conversation shaped by their proximity and shared context. After five years of research and creation, each work has allowed saleh to reflect on her lineage, family and upbringing. Collectively, these pieces form what saleh views as a family portrait that transcends time and space—a history she feels compelled to document and share.
