ArtDayME: Nujoom Alghanem is an Emirati poet, artist, scriptwriter and multi- award- winning film director. She has produced eleven films including five short fictions and six feature length documentaries. Her documentaries have won several local, regional and international prizes. She was born in Dubai in 1962. She graduated with MA in Media Production, School of Film, Griffith University in Australia in 1999.

Nujoom started practicing drawing when she was in high school, and she continued to paint on doors and walls, considering it only a hobby. In the mid-1980s, after her meeting with the late artist Hassan Sharif, she began producing some paintings and sculptural works at Al-Muaraija Studio in Sharjah, where she had the opportunity to present them to the public for the first time.

In January 1985, she founded the Aqwas group, with artist Hassan Sharif, Youssef Khalil, the late Sudanese storyteller, and Khalid Albudoor, the poet, researcher, and translator.

On March 28, 1985, she participated with the Emirates Fine Arts Society in the fourth annual exhibition at the Expo Center in Sharjah.

In 2017, she was one of five artists who participated in the exhibition Rock, Paper, Scissors: Positions in Play curated by Hammad Nasar for the UAE National Pavilion at the Venice Biennale. She presented her work “Between Heaven and Earth – The body I borrowed” for the first time in an integrated way with sound and images.

In 2019, Nujoom was chosen as the solo artist to represent the UAE at the Venice Biennale in Italy. Passage was the name of the site-specific film she produced, and was co-written, designed and supervised by curators Sam Bardaouil and Till Fellrath.

In the following photo album, we will have a look at a selection of Nujoom Alghanem's works.

Photos: Aisha Alabbar Gallery