ANHAR SALEM

Anhar Salem was born in 1993 in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, with a multi-ethnic background: Yemeni and Indonesian.

Salem studied Information Technology at the Arab Open University in Jeddah, then completed a postgraduate degree at Le Fresnoy – Studio national des arts contemporains in Tourcoing, France.

Her artistic practice explores, documents, and reveals private spaces to the public realm through themes of everyday life, the body, and social media. Working primarily with video, Salem draws an emphasis on new forms of communication that critique video as a medium. She often improvises with her iPhone camera, working collaboratively with her subjects and characters as a means to foreground processes around the marginalisation of people and their images.

Salem's work has been recognised with several awards, including the Reiffers Art Initiatives Prize (2025), Révélation Art Numérique – Art Vidéo / ADAGP Prize (2021, France), the Prix Around Video Art Fair / Renato et Catherine Casciani (2021, France), the Radar Award at Curtocircuíto International Film Festival (2022, Spain), and the Prix Analix Forever / Galerie Analix (2021, France).

She has participated in several art residencies, including the Pickle Bar Residency with Slavs and Tatars (Berlin, 2022), the Almansouria Residency at Cité Internationale des Arts (Paris, 2023–2024), the Heritage and Innovation Residency (AlUla, 2024), and the Pinault Collection Artist Residency (Lens, 2025–2026).

Her solo exhibition Mashallah. Why Did You Wander Out? was presented at the Cité internationale des arts in Paris (2023).

Salem has also participated in prominent group exhibitions, including La Seconde vie des images en mouvement at FRAC Corsica (2025, France), The Future in Unmanned at La HEAD (2024, Switzerland), I Took a Screenshot of the Whole World at POUSH (2023, France), Silent Hands at Hayy Jameel (2023, Saudi Arabia), and Pickle Bar Presents at West Den Haag (2023, Netherlands). She also took part in the Islamic Arts Biennale (2025, Saudi Arabia) and the Bukhara Biennial (2025, Uzbekistan).