The tale of the undertaker.
Born in Baghdad and raised in the United Arab Emirates, Neel Jassani is an Iraqi contemporary painter based in Dubai. She studied Fine Arts at the American University in Dubai before continuing her formal training in classical techniques at the Barcelona Academy of Arts. Her debut solo exhibition, The Space in Between (2022), was staged aboard the Queen Elizabeth II in Dubai and presented an autobiographical body of oil paintings shaped by her time in northern Iraq.
Jassani’s work has since been shown at FN Design, Tashkeel, and General 3am, among other UAE venues. Her paintings have been commissioned by cultural institutions and leaders, including a piece created for His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed. She has also been featured in Vogue Arabia and Marie Claire for her multidisciplinary contributions to contemporary culture.
Her practice is rooted in philosophical and literary inquiry. Opening her first collection with a passage from Dostoevsky’s Notes from the Underground, Jassani reflects on the human struggle between determinism and free will. Unlike Oscar Wilde’s claim that art is meant to be useless, serving only as beauty to be admired, Jassani believes that art with a story is more impactful and compelling. She explores human behavior, societal structures, and the ultimate pursuit of meaning, often drawing on autobiographical experiences. Through her work, archetypal stories and mythic narratives unfold within a psychedelic lens, transforming into thought experiments that question mortality, consciousness, and alternate realities. Her paintings probe the “space in between,” creating a dialogue between imagination, memory, and the human condition.
She is now working on her second collection, which takes inspiration from cognitive scientist Donald Hoffman’s user interface theory. The new body of work investigates what lies beneath the surface of perception, challenging the reliability of appearances and exploring the hidden structures that shape how we experience reality.
Neel Jassani 