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.

i
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While silent, almost withdrawn in appearance, Sallam’s trio of sculptures— combining inherent violence and existential quests—forms a metaphor of the current, ceaseless attacks on the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.

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