NEW WORK
Road to Damascus 2024 / Ammanda Seelye Salzman
Born and raised in the Middle East, Ammanda Seelye Salzman belongs to a family whose history is defined by five generations of immersion in and engagement with the Arab World. In 1848 her ancestors sailed from New York to Mount Lebanon as members of a growing American mission movement to spread “Yankee Values” across the world. Subsequent generations served in the region as academics, diplomats and journalists, weaving a complex and multidimensional understanding of the place and its cultures.
Ammanda’s recent work examines her family’s storied past in the Arab world, using archival photographs as the source material for oil paintings. Each painting reveals an intimate story of one family’s connection to the Middle East, and the region’s impact on the artist’s identity and sense of belonging. She deploys symbolism and figuration in reference to her ancestors and their experiences, over which she layers personal knowledge from a sea of memory and the analogy of dreams. To view the artist’s work is to inhabit a world both familiar and foreign - real and surreal - a world filled with mystery.
More broadly, the artist’s work is a commentary on the historical relationship between East and West, Islam and Christianity. Her thematic concerns are personal identities and the relationship between the modern and the ancient. Configuration of memory, symbolism, art historical references and visual archives all bring the paintings to completion.
