Nujoom Alghanem, an Emirati artist, poet, and multi-award-winning film director, was born in Dubai in 1962. She has published eight poetry collections and produced approximately twenty films, including short fiction, short documentaries, art films, and seven feature-length documentaries, which have garnered local, regional, and international recognition. Nujoom is the founder of Nahar Productions, a film production company based in Dubai, and also works as a professional trainer and mentor in filmmaking, art, and creative writing. Her poems have been translated into various languages, such as Spanish, German, French, Turkish, Italian, Macedonian, Greek, and Urdu.
Nujoom earned her bachelor’s degree in Video Production from Ohio University in the United States in 1996 and completed her MA in Media Production from the School of Film, Griffith University in Australia in 1999. Although Nujoom started practicing drawing during high school, she only considered it a hobby until she met the late artist Hassan Sharif in the mid-1980s. She then began producing some paintings and sculptural works at Al-Muaraija Studio in Sharjah, where she presented them to the public for the first time.
In January 1985, Nujoom founded the Aqwas group with artist Hassan Sharif, Youssef Khalil, the late Sudanese storyteller, and Khalid Albudoor, the poet, researcher, and translator. She also participated with the Emirates Fine Arts Society in the fourth annual exhibition at the Expo Center in Sharjah on March 28, 1985.
She was among five artists who participated in the Rock, Paper, Scissors: Positions in Play exhibition at the Venice Biennale’s UAE National Pavilion, curated by Hammad Nasar, in 2017. During the exhibition, she presented her work, “Between Heaven and Earth – The body I borrowed,” which integrated sound and images for the first time.
In 2018, she collaborated with British singer and songwriter Sami Yusuf on a joint work called The Room of Mysteries for Sharjah’s 21st annual Islamic Art Festival, which had the theme “Horizon.” The exhibition took place at the Sharjah Art Museum.
Also in 2018, as part of the “U.A.E. Unlimited” platform, she mentored six emerging artists for the Tashweesh: Noise of Materials fifth session exhibition and displayed her installation work, “Around Us,” as a guest artist at the Maraya Art Center in Sharjah. The exhibition was curated by Laura Metzler.
In 2019, she represented the UAE as a solo artist at the Venice Biennale in Italy, showcasing her site-specific film, Passage, which was co-written, designed, and supervised by curators Sam Bardaouil and Till Fellrath.
Nujoom Alghanem held a solo exhibition titled Malamih at the Maraya Art Center in Sharjah in 2021, curated by Dr. Nina Heydemann. The exhibition featured artwork from three floors, including paintings, ceramic sculptures, installations, and video art, all shown for the first time.
