Sculptor and hypnotherapist Samara Sallam employs language as a force that alters our worlds and bodies. Through carefully crafted objects, her work commands contemplation—seeking meaning in a world of violence by outlining liminal spaces between the magical and the real.
For her exhibition, Sallam reworks various sources—from a Palestinian folktale about a female ghoul to Sufi mysticism and Jungian psychoanalysis—into a story unfolding in three acts.
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The first sculpture is a meticulously carved wooden portal. Rich with symbols— breasts, devilish horns, and five legs—the tall arch forms a body, a material manifestation of a monster or ghoul that casts a creation spell on any visitor passing through it.
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The second sculpture is a small, dead, open-bellied raven. The ceramic bird acts as a compass or an omen—the all-seeing messenger.
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The third sculpture is a fragmented, hypnotic fish head—an ancient symbol of wisdom and transition. The eyes, mouth, and gills in glazed ceramic engage the viewer’s imagination in order to assemble the parts into a fish, pointing, as the exhibition’s third portal or shadow membrane, to another level of consciousness.
A fourth element in the exhibition is a text: a subconscious mind trip of a woman escaping a deadlock marriage, becoming a speaking puddle of blood.
While silent, almost withdrawn in appearance, Sallam’s trio of sculptures— combining inherent violence and existential quests—forms a metaphor of the current, ceaseless attacks on the Palestinian people, connecting to a universal or mythical place of suffering.
Samara Sallam (b. 1991, PS/DK) is a Palestinian, Copenhagen-based visual artist and hypnotherapist. She holds an MFA from the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts (2022) and a BA from the Funen Art Academy, Odense (2019). Furthermore, Sallam has studied visual arts at L’école Supérieure des Beaux-arts in Algeria, and journalism at the University of Damascus in Syria. Sallam has exhibited at venues including Nikolaj Kunsthal, Copenhagen (2023); Musée d’art de Joliette, Québec (2023); and Kunsthal 44Møen, Denmark (2023).