SUMIAH SALLOUM

Dates of residency:  May till July 2016 
Born: 1992
Nationality: American
Lives and works: Western Massachusetts and Boston, US
Education: 
2015 BFA in Photography, Massachusetts College of Art and Design
Selected shows:
2017 Stare, Boston City Hall, Boston
2016 Femme Fotale Volume III Launch Show,  Art Intersection, Gilbert, Arizona
2015 Inter/face, Gallery South, Boston
2014  Growing Angry Slowly, Aviary Gallery, Jamaica Plain

THE ARTIST
Sumiah Salloum is a photographer from the United States. Most of her work has been about her family and their identity. Some of the topic she has been focusing on is her father's muslim faith and Lebanese descent, her mother as a single parent, her brother’s transition from female to male, and her cousin and aunt emigrating to America from Lebanon. By capturing these transitory periods and complex topics, Salloum’s deft approach makes her  work inherently political.

THE RESIDENCY
As you were is a series of photos that examines the sense of displacement the artist felt upon visiting her father’s homeland for the first time. Although taken in Beirut and Bekaa Valley, the themes it addresses can apply to many diasporic communities: the divide between a longing for concrete identity to one’s homeland, yet a feeling of displacement in it. Set in Beirut and Bekaa Valley, her photographs of antiquities and ruins are contrasted with youthful culture, prewar/postwar and ultimately rebirth.