Salaam’s Heartwood tree ring works are a meditation on the heart unseen via the poetic beauty of trees as well as an ongoing dialog regarding the ecology of invasive species and their relationship to migration and notions of belonging. By focusing on the natural formations within, Salaam refers to our capacity for abstraction, growth and our shared malleable form. Just as trees are moved by wind, sun, and even those around them, we too are shaped by the symphony of life that surrounds us. Using sections of a fallen invasive old growth tree, sliced to reveal the growth rings Salaam suspends pigments in resin, pouring layer upon layer in a gradient binary of dark and light like the rings of summer and winter that define the life of a tree. Here, Salaam employs a brightening toward the centre void or heartwood of each piece. The artist explores the benefits and inherent beauty that even an invasive species contributes to its earthen home and ecology, questioning ideas of belonging and what it means to be invasive or native, a question that is personal to the artist as one who focuses on deep time and is himself a mixed European, African muslim. 

Drawing on action painting and gestural abstraction, Salaam’s thickly layered acrylic relief paintings reveal a spontaneity, a surrender to chance and the sculptural elements inherent in painting. After days of preparation, Salaam pours up to 15 litres of paint onto a large canvas, and in a focused gesture, creates thick works in a single movement as the paint starts to dry. Here Salaam presents sea-scapes using this technique.