2025
Salman Al Najem
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Painter
Melted crayon on paper - 41.8 x 59 cm - 2025
Hadesisgood is an exploration of the subconscious mind. Working with the theories from Swiss psychologist Carl Jung who devised a psychotherapeutic tool, known as active imagination which is a process or technique of engaging with the ideas or imaginings of one's mind. It is used as a mental strategy to communicate with the subconscious mind. It can serve as a bridge between the conscious "ego" and the unconscious. Hadesisgood is an experimentation similar to that of automatic writing/journaling. Hadesisgood is automatic drawing.
The cocept
Hadesisgood is an ongoing project by Salman AlNajem that started in Paris in 2013 when he bought his first hardcover pocket-sized plain Moleskin notebook. The book was added to Salman’s daily essentials, taking it with him everywhere he went. With time Salman found himself trying to pass time, or distract himself in university lectures by making doodles. Salman is no stranger to doodling in academic settings, he often jokes about being sent to detention in school for doodling on desks, and then doodling on desks in detention.
In 11 years, Salman has amassed a collection of 58 sketchbooks filled with over 2,700 different sketches. Throughout the years the style of these sketches have grown, evolved and metamorphosed. The main communality that ties all the psycho-spiritual-sketches is the eccentric line drawings that usually give birth to figures with juvenile smily faces. These smily faces are an ode to the drawings Salman made as a child. Some are optimistic, some are manic but they are all a true and untouched, unfiltered, uncensored, unhinged, preview into Salman’s personal unconscious.
Melted crayon on paper - 35.5 x 43 cm - 2025
Melted crayon on paper - 35.5 x 43 cm - 2025
Melted crayon on paper - 35.5 x 43 cm - 2025
Melted crayon on paper - 35.5 x 43 cm - 2025
Involved in psychology
Salman is heavily involved in psychology. As an accredited hypnotherapist and psychotherapist. Hadesisgood has been a valuable mediative therapeutic tool. Salman to off-load his mind, to record his thoughts, feelings and daydreams, in sketches and texts. The texts are profound prophetic proclamations in the form of minimal and reactive one-liners, or even in some cases one-worders. Filling an entire page with a word or two, giving weight to them, for the sake of invoking contemplation.
Although the sketches are a personal exploration, some can be interpreted as transpersonal describing experiences and worldviews that extend beyond the personal level of the psyche, and beyond mundane worldly events. Drinking from the waters of the collective unconscious, (a field of the mind/psyche that is shared by all minds, a place where common dreams and ideas exist). Making the sketches relatable and familiar to others who might have seen similar motifs and scenes in their unconscious explorations or dreams. Salman is proud and happy to share these unconscious insights to the public, to provide solace or healing to any who came across them.
Emulsion on canvas - 145 x 224 cm - 2025
