Eslam's work often takes place in domestic settings and spaces in which playfulness and vulnerability combine. Deeply embedded in spirituality, Eslam is always asking questions about what it means to surrender to the present moment, with others and in nature, and with intuition as a guiding principle. On a constant journey not to find the answers but rather to visually navigate and braid childhood notions and questions together, Eslam's personal projects and research grow mostly into a visual dialogue consisting of photographs, kept diaries and notes, collage, and sound.
Walking comes as one of the main pillars of navigating the everyday. Since applying for asylum and becoming a refugee in a whole foreign land, Eslam has sensed how that changed him and his practice. Concerns about identity, livelihood, and displacement have been rushing to the forefront of his research. Do we build our homes or do we find them/find us? Those beguiling feelings of belonging are the roots of Eslam's visual inquiry.
In Can You See With Your Heart?, a verse from the Quran became an anchor for the artist: "Have they not journeyed through the land, so their hearts may understand and their ears may listen? Indeed, it is not the eyes that are blind, but it is the hearts within the chests that grow blind." (22:46) Eslam considers how the heart sees will lead us to moving as a spiritual process.
Eslam Abd El Salam
Eslam Abd El Salam is a visual artist based in Belfast, Northern Ireland. His work focuses on walking as a pedagogical practice and is centered around the body: the body in motion, in contact with nature, and in the presence of other bodies.
Through the mediums of analogue photography, Polaroids, text, moving image, and mixed media, Eslam considers notions of synchronicity, specifically in relation to friendship and serendipitous encounters with others. Other recurring themes in his work include family archives, time, and displacement. He is keen to visually find the common thread between the personal and collective within his artistic practice.
Originally from Cairo, Egypt, and based in Belfast since 2022, Eslam's journey to Ireland began in March 2019 as an artist-in-residence at The Curfew Tower in Cushendall. His work has been exhibited internationally in Finland, France, Latvia, Egypt, and the UK. Most recently, he has worked with Kunstverein Aughrim on developing a long-term photographic and installation project called Can You See with Your Heart? that was exhibited during Craic in the Granite Music & Arts Festival on the 27th of June 2025.
