Shamma Al Amri

Shamma Al Amri (b. 1985) received her Masters degree in culture and creative industries, and holds a Bachelors Degree in Art and Design from Zayed University where she was part of the Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Young Leaders Program.

Al Amri combines her fine art experience with digital technology. She has developed a process by which she employs a pinhole camera and traditional film to achieve her distinct photographic style.

Her work explores the inevitability of temporal and geographical change as our present/now will become our past/history. Her images portray the transformation of tribal societies found in isolated villages, into the metropolitan centers of the modern day UAE. They are in essence, an amalgam of nostalgic revery depicting a contemporary landscape. Al Amri has participated in local and international exhibitions, including Past Forward: Contemporary Art from the Emirates (2015); Art Dubai (2012); To The Moon, XVA Gallery, Dubai, UAE (2012) and the Shanghai World Expo 2010.

Al Amri lives and works in Dubai where she is a member of the Five Art Beats collective, and co-founder of The Nomad Box Project, a moving art space housed in a renovated shipping container, which exhibits contemporary local arts to the public. She is a recipient of the Salama bint Hamdan Emerging Artists Fellowship, organized in partnership with the Rhode Island School of Design.