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At first glance at the painting “…And justice for all (2023)”, our eyes are drawn to two proud Arab warriors brandishing swords, flanking the tableau. There is a theme of mirroring, with pairs of mythical beasts, gryphons and sphinxes on guard, protecting the four corners of an architectural façade with flat roofs. This structure could represent either Solomon’s temple or a traditional Bahraini house, adorned with geometric motifs and stucco panels. The eyes are drawn to an orb of radiating light that refracts all of the colours of the seven chakras, foregrounding a humble, Zeus-like figure. Then at the very centre, we find the fearsome Super Saiyan from Dragon Ball Z. This intricate tableau, created by artist Salman Al Najem and named after Metallica’s fourth studio album, introduces his artistic practice with three important tenets: a flair for the surreal, a skill for appropriation, and the rich philosophical depth of his artistic world, where all influences stand equal.
Those who are used to travelling frequently between cultural contexts describe an ease with a personal sense of fragmentation. A sense of self “at home” with family but also the comfort of shedding those expectations and becoming a different self, far away from societal pressures. Salman is someone who epitomises an unfettered compartmentalisation of modern living in his artworks, expanding to the inner landscapes of psychogeography.
Since 1992, he has lived and worked between his birth country of Bahrain and his spiritual home of the United Kingdom, where he received his master’s in Painting from the Royal College of Art in 2017. He is a traveller of the in-between spaces, spanning the mediums of painting and sketching, the material world of consumerist culture and the metaphysical planes of spiritual practice. The way we arrange our personal spaces—whether on our desks or Instagram feeds—often reflects our aspirations, curating objects to shape how others perceive us. But our personal economies of value and how that may be related to associations from our dreams are buried much deeper.
These hidden processes are what Salman’s artworks reveal in his tableaux. His paintings reside in the space between dualities, inviting us to join him there. In the surrealist spirit, his art suggests that what lies behind our eyes is as quantifiable and meaningful as what is in front of them. Notably, Salman is not only an artist but also an accredited psychotherapist and hypnotherapist. His work addresses the societal obsessions and fears that emerge from our subconscious as symbols. He has a refrain he repeats during our conversation, almost like an artistic mantra: “I don’t make nice pictures; I am here to create energy.”
To understand Salman’s quest to create meaningful art, one must delve into his world. He is incredibly well-read and attributes years of studying various disciplines as the driving force behind his practice. He speaks of artists and thinkers like old friends, welcoming their creative influence: “I admired how Mark Rothko created an immersive world or the freedom of expression in Jean-Michel Basquiat.”
Speaking of his technique, Salman is passionate about combining disparate references and recontextualising them. He draws from a broad spectrum of sources, including the Western European art canon, Egyptian mythology, and heavy metal music, demonstrating that appropriation can serve as a deconstructive tool for social commentary. “I will take an artwork and appropriate it, unapologetically,” he says. “I did ‘The Ancient of Days’ by William Blake. I cut it out and painted it as closely as I could. I’m borrowing a charged symbol, but I am also bringing it into new light because we are discussing it. You’re seeing it; it’s not dying.”
He is thoughtful about what appropriation means to him as an artist, noting that we live in a porous world where we are constantly absorbing and transmitting visual symbols. Salman highlights what he describes as “brainless TV” as a negative example of this consumption, suggesting that binge-watching is damaging to our psyche. He believes we should be intentional about the music we listen to, the things we watch, and the food we consume. Salman often works with found images and collective knowledge production, compiling images into a collage in Photoshop, creating a digital sketch, and then projecting it onto corrugated steel or canvas. He describes society as continually engaging in this process of sharing and resharing information, a Tumblr-esque infinite loop of dubious ownership and new-old discoveries.
“When I post my paintings on Instagram, the last post will be, maybe, four images that I appropriated. I’ll even link to it. Because I sometimes feel alone in my interests. I’m sure people who have similar interests, the same as me, may also feel alone in them”
Although he describes creating art as a solitary practice, the connection with a collective is never far from his mind. He is profoundly inspired by psychoanalysts like Carl Jung, whose work embraced the mystical aspects of reality. We are accustomed to cultural knowledge and markers that arise from language, but Jung introduced archetypes—universal, inherited ideas or patterns of thought within our collective unconscious. Jung once said, “A picture paints a thousand words, but an archetype is worth a thousand images.” Salman utilises commonplace or popular symbols from logos and corporations, which he considers modern archetypes. For example, he cites Disney’s Scar from ‘The Lion King’ as the archetypal villain, symbolising betrayal within close ranks and family issues. He finds these symbols compelling because they are so charged. Salman’s work engages with non-linguistic, tacit knowledge and cultural symbols that carry multiple meanings, particularly focusing on how collective memory emerges in his art.
“I don’t make nice pictures; I am here to create energy.”
“Jung spoke about automatic writing. I do ‘automatic drawing’. Since 2013, I’ve been carrying pocket-notebooks, and letting these sketches flow through me, it’s almost like, alter ego, called ‘hadesisgood’. I’m currently on Sketchbook #57. I have fifty-seven of these, and they’re all stream-of-consciousness drawings.”
His references extend far beyond the art world. He shares a birthday with the English writer Aleister Crowley, a significant inspiration for his work, who studied Egyptian, Ancient Greek, Sumerian, and Vedic mythology. Salman is also interested in poetry, though he does not practice it. During our conversation about the surrealist poet, artist, and film director Jean Cocteau, he expressed a fascination with Cocteau’s reinterpretation of the Orpheus myth—the tragic hero who played a song for Death to be reunited with his beloved before tragically looking back, sealing his fate.
Salman’s painting, ‘Death, Rebirth (more precious) (2023),’ draws from his near-death experience a few years ago. “Since I was a child, I’ve always been curious about what the commute from this life to the next looks like, and I was granted a peek,” he recalls.
Salman’s work carries a surrealist essence, challenging societal norms and delving into the depths of the unconscious. His paintings strive to visualise and comprehend the incomprehensible aspects of everyday life, whether that involves creating energy or contemplating life after death.
In the constellation of modern artists from the Arab world, there is a throughline that connects Al Najem in speaking from South West Asia and dreaming in the West. We speak of Sudanese artist Kamala Ibrahim Ishag, who also studied at the RCA and was a lover of William Blake’s paintings. She created drawings of strangers on the tube in the 1960s, which looked quite terrifying as distorted figures—they spoke to her isolation of being caught between spaces.
When asked if he feels a similar anxious positionality, drawing from Western artistic traditions rather than turning to regional inspirations, Salman reflects on his Westernised art history education. He acknowledges that his foundational artists taught him how to navigate the world as an artist in Bahrain and as a Bahraini individual. He laments the lack of opportunities for artists in the country, even now in 2024.
“I find I don’t do as much artistically [as in the UK] because there aren’t many resources here. I can’t find the books I’m interested in here. There aren’t any permanent art museums or anything like that.” This is why one of his artistic goals, outside of exhibiting his work, is opening his broad personal library as a collection with visitors. For this reason, Britain continues to be an important site of exploration for Salman to visit, where he can walk from free museums to free parks, buy books and meander aimlessly. “Britain is still a very important and magical centre of my world. There’s talk about Glastonbury being the heart chakra of the world from different access points. I’ve also spent a lot of time inside Stonehenge and drew inspiration from it.”
A past series of his, ‘EJTMA3YAT’ (Social Studies), was heavily satirical of cultural status in countries like Bahrain in the Arabian Gulf. He is no stranger to critique, with society not being ready for some of his social commentary. “I actually started painting on the Shemagh, the patterned headwear fabric. Now I’m painting on steel. But I’m a painter at heart, by tradition. I fancy myself a traditional painter, but what I’m doing is very untraditional.”
We discuss the phrase ‘anti-hero’, which allows our conversation to circle us back to the dualities found in society. We talk about the things artists are glorified for and the hair-thin border of things that they are denigrated for by society. “To me, an anti-hero is someone who is a hero but deemed not by the majority of society mostly because that someone is able to see what is unseen, and says the things that other people don’t want to hear, and I think that is in some way the goal of art”
In his studies of archetypes, Carl Jung defined the trickster archetype as being the closest to untouched, pure consciousness because it is untethered by societal expectations and norms. It connects to the spirit of the Carnivalesque, coined by French critic Mikhail Bakhtin, which originated in part from the jesters who performed at the end-of-winter carnivals in 19th-century Europe. Beyond fear, the carnivalesque explores contortions of the commonplace into the comically grotesque.
This pattern is about playing with extremes and a clash of renewed creative ideas, belying a childlike element of mischief. As Salman said himself, his work allows him to play a role in society. This is one definition of an anti-hero. Another is a figure ahead of their time, where society takes some time to catch up.
Words: Hadeel Eltayeb
