Kais Salman: Cities

In his older works, Kais Salman utilises satire to subvert the normalisation of greed, vanity, and ideological extremism that is rapidly defining our era. Seeking to confront and exorcise sociocultural manifestations of such depravity, Salman taps into ugliness and abjection through intentionally hyperbolised imagery accentuated by punches of colour and aestheticised forms. In his latest series, the artist takes these forms and explores their abstraction, in search of new compositions.

Drawing upon folktales, epics, and myths, Salman creates alternate realities in which the characters he introduces, sometimes seen lined side by side, make up the basis of these worlds or ‘cities’. Introducing more figures than in his older works, each takes on an interdependent role, playing a part in the collective consciousness of a place and the work. The artist explores the roles that these characters play in the making up of a social fabric and their part of making up alleys, streets, and entire cities. In many of these works, the figures are placed in imperfect rows and columns, overlapping and interacting, appearing from far as though they are a building – they are the columns, floors, and windows – they are the make up of a structure. Through this, Salman touches upon the effect a people have on their ‘cities’ urban architecture and vice versa. The presence of the inhabitants of a place in the ‘streets’, the interactions that take place between people, and the overall surrounding environment, are a source of inspiration for Salman, shedding light on the universality of human interaction.