Shaping Sand into Soul: How Neda Salmanpour Is Redefining Desert Art

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_{In a world full of concrete jungles and digital distractions, Neda Salmanpour is quietly sculpting poetry from the Earth itself. Born in Iran in 1993 and now living in the UAE, Neda is an award-winning architect and product designer whose creative work defies easy labels. Her pieces blend architecture, sculpture, and narrative into one seamless experience, all guided by curiosity, culture, and the tactile beauty of nature.}

_{Her most widely talked-about project is Sandscapes, a breathtaking sculptural series made from desert sand. But this isn’t just about aesthetics. For Neda, sand is both substance and symbol.}

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A Childhood Rooted in Nature

_{When asked where it all began, Neda points to her early years spent exploring gardens and building tiny structures from mud, stones, and leaves. Her curiosity led the way. Nature, she says, was her first teacher. She learned contrast and variation simply by observing how one season melted into the next.}

_{Later, her move from Iran to the UAE became a turning point. Surrounded by new landscapes and exposed to countless worldviews, she gained a deeper awareness of how place and memory shape design. The collision of her Iranian roots and the multicultural energy of the UAE gave her a creative perspective that is both grounded and expansive.}

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The Vision Behind Sandscapes

_{Commissioned by Inloco Gallery as part of the Useless Palace initiative, Sandscapes is more than an installation. It is an emotional and physical response to the desert landscape of Mleiha. These tall, humanoid sculptures seem to emerge directly from the terrain, their curved forms echoing the natural flow of the sand around them.}

_{Bringing them to life was no simple task. Neda spent months photographing dunes in different lighting, observing how sand moved and reacted. From those studies, she created 3D models. The final pieces are hollow to reduce weight, built from sand she personally collected, filtered, and treated. Placing them back in the desert for photography completed what she describes as a full-circle moment.}

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Creating Curiosity Through Public Art

_{Public art, in Neda’s eyes, is a way to stop someone in their tracks. She designs for those little “aha” moments that disrupt routine and spark curiosity. For her, that pause is where meaning begins.}

_{She sees public art as a powerful equalizer. Open calls for projects allow anyone with a strong concept to participate. Over time, she believes this has elevated the quality of engagement between artists and audiences alike.}

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Where Design Meets Emotion

_{With a background in architectural engineering, Neda doesn’t start her work by chasing beauty. She starts with performance and purpose. Yet if the result doesn’t feel beautiful in the end, something is missing.}

_{Her love for brutalist architecture reflects this idea. Often misunderstood as cold, she views it as honest. Its raw materials, weight, and texture tell a story. Ironically, it was a conversation about Soviet-era brutalism at a gallery event that connected her to Inloco and opened the door to her first major visual art project.}

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Rethinking Sustainability

_{Sustainability, for Neda, goes beyond recycled materials or eco buzzwords. She believes true sustainability lies in durability. A meaningful object that gets passed down has far more value than something trendy and disposable.}

_{That’s why she hopes Sandscapes will endure not only physically but emotionally. A sculpture may erode with time, but a memory can last much longer.}

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A Layered Creative Philosophy

_{Neda builds her work like a story. Every location is studied. Every material is chosen with care. She sees the environment as a collaborator and writes a creative brief for each piece to keep it anchored in context.}

_{Her approach is technical but poetic. It is the engineer’s mind meeting the artist’s heart. She believes even emotions can be translated into form when you understand space and material as a language.}

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The Power of Small Sparks

_{In the end, Neda hopes her work moves people. Whether through texture, story, or surprise, her goal is to make someone feel something — even if it’s just a flicker of curiosity. For her, each project is a chance to add a meaningful grain of sand to the larger cultural landscape.}

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