April 24, 2023 - 6:00 PM to 8:30 PM
Dubois Center
Dr. Halide Salam continues a 40-year focus on the intersections between the biological, the ecological, and the spiritual in art, leading her into an increasingly deeper understanding for her own position within her practice.
This exhibition will include recent paintings from Salam’s new series of paintings (TransPlace, TransLight, and TransMigration), within which she explores her own personal growth as a Muslim immigrant in modern America. A central focus for Dr. Salam is a poem by the 13-century Sufi poet Rumi:
I died as a mineral and became a plant,
I died as plant and rose to animal,
I died as animal and I was Man.
What should I fear?
When was I less by dying?
FROM THESE HILLS 2021: CONTEMPORARY ART IN THE SOUTHERN APPALACHIAN HIGHLANDS
September 30, 2021 - February 06, 2022
Images featured are from 2019 FTH exhibition.
EXHIBIT DETAILS
William King Museum of Art (WKMA) celebrates the diversity of regional artists with the 15th anniversary of its biennial exhibition, From These Hills: Contemporary Art in the Southern Appalachian Highlands. This major exhibition of new works by artists working in all media highlights the continuing artistic vision of individuals in our region. The 2021 exhibition will open at the William King Museum of Art, in Abingdon, VA on September 30, 2021 and will continue through February 6, 2022.
Every other year, selected works from a number of artists are carefully chosen by a guest curator. Selected artists for the 2021 exhibition include Betsy Bannan, Carla Taylor, Carrie A. Dyer, Cavan Fleming, David Underwood, Devin Mitchell, Gary Mesa-Gaido, Halide Salam, Heather Fleming, James Veenstra, Jean Hess, Jeff Chapman-Crane, Jonathan Adams, Joshua White, Ju Yun, Kevin Beck, Kirsten Stolle, Kris Rehring, Laura Ann Schroeder, Mike Ousley, Ray Stratton, Sally Brogden, Simone Paterson, Torrance Redford, Virginia Derryberry, and William Fields.
This year, William King Museum of Art is honored to be hosting “From These Hills” guest curator Michael Rooks. Michael Rooks has served as the Wieland Family Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the High Museum of Art since 2010. Rooks served as Commissioner and co-curator of the U.S. Pavilion at the 12th International Architecture Exhibition, La Biennale di Venezia, in 2010 and is an independent art writer. Prior to joining the High, Rooks held curatorial positions at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (MCA); The Contemporary Museum, Honolulu; and the Honolulu Academy of Arts.
From These Hills: Contemporary Art in the Southern Appalachian Highlands is one of William King Museum of Art’s longest standing traditions. First held in 1993 this biennial is unique in its geographical scope and the number of artists it has presented who live and work in Southern Appalachia. This year marks William King Museum of Art’s fifteenth biennial with twenty-six artists from around the region chosen by guest curator Michael Rooks who has served as the Wieland Family Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, Georgia since 2010.
“Halide Salam’s TransPlace 7 connects memories associated with human evolution to the origins of cosmic matter. Her allusion to the Cartesian vortex suggests the influence of originary forces on the patterns of everyday life.”
Michael Rooks - Curator of Modern of Contemporary Art at the High Museum in Atlanta, Georgia since 2010.
Welcome Home
Her Liminal Asian-Appalachian Experiences Feb/April 2021
Becoming Bodies Of Trauma, Displacement & Dissent - Feb/Apr 29
TransLight / TransPlace
Piedmont Arts (January - March 2020)
Curator Bernadette Moore
Like a shaman, Halide Salam dances on surfaces to open passages into the undiscovered world within, and to make meaning of the world without. Her paintings are neither visions nor memories. She paints in silence with no preconceptions, drawings or ideas, relying on what she knows and feels about the natural worlds, and her place in it. Salam moves the paint, through unspoken words as tones, lines and hues, connecting images that arise through a sense of unison within patterns and structures that evolve and emerge through the process of call and response. It is a rhythmic dance on the canvas that opens up various forms of consciousness making visible the invisible, finding harmony through a passage of consciousness. Harmony is the outcome of struggle. There is beauty in struggle. Salam’s work reflects both the beauty of struggle and the moments of rest and solace.
Tangibility Of Faith:
Art & Religion in Appalachia and Tennessee (January-March 2019)
Curated by Moria Frazier, Cheyenne Good, Amber Howard
Featured works by: Sasan Ahovan, Clorinda Bell, Rachel Boillot, William Cross+, Nancy Fischman, Jeff Marley, Jocelyn Mathewes, Mary Nees, Masud Olufani, Halide Salam, Randy Sanders, Katie Sheffield, Page Turner, Nancy Villa-Calvo, Carlton Wilkinson
Interfaith Panel and Reception at the Reece Museum [Tipton Gallery (ETSU) / 126 Spring St., Johnson City, TN]: January 31, 2019. Exhibition was showcased through February 15, 2019. Panelists: Fr. Steve Matthews, Christ the Savior Greek Orthodox Church; Masud Olufani, Baha’i Faith; Dr. Halide Salam, Islamic Faith; and Kiran Singh, Sikh and Interfaith Peace Activist.
Presented by the Department of Art and Design, Solcumb Galleries and Reece Museum, in partnership with the Woman’s Studies Program, Department of Philosophy and Humanities, SG Curatorial Internship Program, and Tennessee Arts Commission’s Arts Project Support (APS).
This exhibition sought to bring together works of art that capture this unique element from each practice of faith. Many of the artists in this exhibition directly incorporate their personal practices of faith in their work, while others choose to represent how a certain faith has shaped our community and environment. By incorporating a wide variety of religious expression, the goal becomes fostering a sense of togetherness, community, respect, and learning among all traditions. Furthermore, because religious art often incorporates elements that may not be seen in other types of art, Tangibility of Faith will explore the qualities of religious or spiritual art that separate it from the rest, While viewing may religious images in preparation for this exhibition, it became evident that for these artists, the choice of subject matter, medium, color, style, and composition is greatly affected by treligious practice, Many times, religious or spiritual art is made differently, with a unique process or perspective.
Halide Salam, Islamic Faith
My paintings are a personal sanctuary where I communicate directly with the “natural world"s, conduction a sacred conversation with archetypal forms encountered in the imagination. Although my vision are of an empirical nature, I am confronted nonetheless with the innate symmetries that lie latent within all complex natural phenomena. These, combined with history, knowledge and experiences give rise to a vision that unites cosmological ultimates - of genesis and extinction - and finalizes into a magical metaphor of an enlightened state of experience. Coming from the schools sacred geometry and universal patterns, I find connections with the everyday phenomenon in nature and life experiences with sacred texts. In my work, the square represents enclosure and what is finite whereas the circle that the physical space to memor, the imagination and my surroundings.
My paintings are investigations to be viewed as time-zoners in which she intuits patterns and structures inherent in nature that speak to the connection of all living organisms. Dhikr - remembering faculty - is an induced memory state of mind where comprehended signs can be interfaced with an inner vision and knowledge. Using this state of mind, I investigate ‘the unity of the real’ - that everything within one’s consciousness, the unconscious and all that is to inspire my painting process. I belong to the school of contemporary anionic art where the image is the vestige, immediate consciousness to charge the meaning and purpose of the images. These are applied in an unobtrusive way but aim to register at some level within the viewer’s consciousness. There is never any attempt at atmosphere, shadow, perspective or modeling. Each mark of color remains independent yet perceptibly connected to the galactic energy surrounding it.
In Trees of Existence - Tree of Light, I use a system of visual metaphors from geometry and nature by which the viewer may interact and feel stimulated towards imaginary suggestions and representation of an interstellar nature. In Remembering the Seven - Noah, Abraham, and Moses and Jesus, each work symbolizes a specific, spiritual level of wisdom and discovery. The imaged metaphor, created by geometrical patterns of a spatial nature, is just a vehicle to convey paradoxical references to the actual and virtual nature of the legendary men.