Sara Sallam – Care. Reconsidering Photography

How can we look at the violent practices of the colonial era today? How can we make wounds visible – in order to initiate a process of healing? The Egyptian artist Sara Sallam addresses these questions in the exhibition “Sara Sallam – Care. Reconsidering Photography” at the MK&G. With existing and new works created especially for the exhibition, she engages with the MK&G’s archaeological and photographic collection and its colonial legacy in three chapters. The MK&G is presenting the works of the young artist, who lives in the Netherlands, for the first time in Germany as part of the 9th Triennial of Photography Hamburg in 2026, which is dedicated to the theme “Alliance, Infinity, Love – in the Face of the Other”.

Sallam’s research-based practice, distinguished by poetic reimaginings, includes photography, moving images, writing, performative voice narration, archival interventions, and self-publishing artist books. Through her mixed-media installations and handmade publications, she proposes counter-narratives that challenge colonial histories and invite more compassionate encounters with the past. For the work “Suturing Wounds” (an ongoing series launched in 2024), for example, the artist is making facsimiles of fragmented Coptic textiles from the MK&G’s collection of antiquities and hand-stitching them into a tunic, which she wears in photographic self-portraits. Here, the acts of excavating and tearing artefacts from burial grounds is countered by the practices of assembling and sewing – a gesture of resistance and at the same time a healing ritual with which Sallam commemorates her unknown ancestors.

The exhibition is taking place as part of the 9th Triennial of Photography Hamburg in 2026, which is entitled “Alliance, Infinity, Love – in the Face of the Other” (5 June to 22 September 2026).

The exhibition is supported by the Exhibition Fund of the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg and the Mondriaan Fund.

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