Q: It's wonderful to hear about your practice and the thought process that goes into it. Can you tell me more about your process; specifically, about using one of the liberation fiction tools in your practice? Perhaps you can expand on how you use hypnosis or fiction methodologically towards arriving at these open imaginative spaces?

Samara: I have been writing more; maybe I'm looking for some liberation of what is going on in the world, as well as inside my psyche, through writing.

After a few years of practicing hypnosis, things shift; it moves from being a method to enter the subconscious through calculated steps and techniques to a skill of initiating that space with not so much effort, and that's what I do when writing or making art. 

For example, to understand hypnosis techniques is to create a condition to trick the conscious mind, which is thinking, judging, and analysing the current moment, by creating a linguistic pattern of words. After a while, the brain starts to analyse this pattern as a sound pattern instead of words that carry meaning; it becomes just sounds. That's the moment we call hypnosis: in this moment you can ask the subconscious for information about a certain matter, and the subconscious will answer because the conscious mind, which is considered the defence mechanism, was tricked and bypassed. This technique could also be used to install new ideas or a new perspective on things. That's why it is considered a therapy practice, where it can break stuck behavioural patterns. 

This is one technique that fictional literature can borrow and use to allow the reader to immerse in the universe of the story, and maybe, in that space, offer something more to the reader, or install new ideas. 

This sounds dangerous, but it is important to understand that hypnosis is unable to change core values in people. Values in the Western psychological understanding are located in the unconscious, which is a different space than the subconscious that holds long-term memory, emotions, and creativity. Hypnosis mostly works with the subconscious. There are techniques to work with the unconscious, but it's not taught in hypnosis schools and only spiritual masters know how to work with it. 

To go back to the linguistic patterns, in folk stories, there are several techniques for achieving this effect. This could be with the beginnings of the story that in Arabic you call الحكاية سجادة (sijjadat al-hikaya), a term I learnt from a Palestinian storyteller in Amman. It's the beginning of the story that attracts the listener and allows them to relax into listening to the story. Also, another technique is having repetitive chapters, a song, or certain words. 

This is just a general explanation, how I use this knowledge is now a bit intuitive, as I said in the beginning. I try to create a similar trick visually with the exhibition room, how you enter the space, and what is the first thing you see, and how the rest of the show unfolds. 

Another important note in storytelling practices to keep in mind is to balance how many details you directly tell and how much you leave for the receiver's imagination to continue the image or the scene. I also use this in the visual sculptures or installations I make. I work with symbols and signs to convey a meaning just as language functions, and I tell part of the story and allow the visitors to complete it. 

I'm trying to simplify the process here, but I believe that offering such visual space with those characteristics is somehow a way to resist and a way to liberate imagination. In my work, I try to include a multi-layered system of semiotics. If the visitors are aware of those dynamics, then they can sit more with the work and do the meditation that will open deeper layers of imagination, even though I'm aware that this requires a witch to notice hehehe. 


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In this project presented at Overgaden (Copenhagen, DK) Sallam reworks various sources—including her native Palestinian folktale archetype of the girl Ghoul, a flesheating monster who devours her family and destroys her whole village, as well as Sufi mysticism and Jungian psychoanalysis—into a story of finding “meaning,” unfolding in three acts:

i. The first sculpture is a meticulously carved wooden portal. Rich with symbols— breasts, devilish horns, and five legs—the tall arch forms a body, a material manifestation of a monster or ghoul that casts a creation spell on any visitor passing through it.

ii. The second sculpture is a small, dead, open-bellied raven. The ceramic bird acts as a compass or an omen—the all-seeing messenger.

iii. The third sculpture is a fragmented, hypnotic fish head—an ancient symbol of wisdom and transition. The eyes, mouth, and gills in glazed ceramic engage the viewer’s imagination in order to assemble the parts into a fish, pointing, as the exhibition’s third portal or shadow membrane, to another level of consciousness.

A fourth element in the exhibition is a text: a subconscious mind trip of a woman escaping a deadlock marriage, becoming a speaking puddle of blood. While silent, almost withdrawn in appearance, Sallam’s trio of sculptures— combining inherent violence and existential quests—forms a metaphor of the current, ceaseless attacks on the Palestinian people, connecting to a universal or mythical place of suffering.