Abdus Salaam is a cultural fusion of Western, Eastern, and African sensibilities.
Born in Cape Town and raised on a remote African farm without electricity, his
earliest memories are shaped by days spent painting and sculpting with natural
materials in the mountains alongside his mother. At the age of ten, he moved
unexpectedly to Los Angeles, where his formative years were immersed in the
arts, extreme sports, and the layered realities of Western culture.
A self-taught multidisciplinary artist, Salaam draws deep inspiration from natural
beauty, ecology, and spirituality. His practice reflects a sensitivity to the
metaphysical qualities embedded in nature, materials, form, and color. Through
his work, he explores notions of time-both intimate and cosmic-as well as the
intricate connections between planetary, communal, and personal states.
Contemporary in his mystic abstraction and surreal expression, Salaam's work is
often rooted in his original poetry. His art calls from a familiar place to a state of
peaceful and intense longing, exploring themes of oneness and vulnerability. He
often uses material to explore the immaterial, always working alone to imbue his
intention into every fiber of the piece.
Salaam moves freely between mediums-sculpture, painting, video,
photographic "light paintings," poetry, and music-crafting poetic worlds that
range from the intimate to the monumental.