"When a wall holds memory, 
is it still only a boundary, 
or has it become witness and archive?"
  • Walls are never neutral. They divide and enclose, but they also absorb, accumulate, and remember. They become surfaceswhere silence is broken, where resistance takes form, and where memory refuses erasure.In ‘’Marks of Return’’, Salma Dib positions the wall as a living surface of resistance. Her works emerge from the raw, layered language of street walls, urgent, provisional, and defiant in the face of disappearance. In Palestine, walls are not inert structures; they have become unavoidable canvases, inscribed with acts of testimony that transform stone and concrete into collective archives of defiance. Against the violence of enclosure, silencing, and the ongoing genocide of a people, every inscription is both shield and amplification: protecting the individual while carrying forward a shared voice.
  • Dib translates this charged vocabulary into layered compositions that resist seamless narratives. Scraped, overlapped, and interrupted, her surfaces echo the fragmentary and unstable accumulation of resistance. In their incompleteness, they mirror the precariousness of memory itself,always vulnerable to erasure, yet insistentin its reappearance. In her new body of work, this is most powerfully seen in a monumental piece composed of 25 smaller works, layered together as a single whole.At once fragmented and unified, it becomes both symbol and archive: a meditation on resistance, the passage of time, and the collective act of holding memory together.
  • At a time when Palestine endures relentless assault, Dib underscores the wall as more than a structure of separation. It is a living archive, an active participant in the strugglefor existence, dignity, and collective memory. Her paintings hold space for voices that refuse silence, affirming the wall as a site where resilience is inscribed, and where belonging and liberation continue to be written, again and again.Through this language, Dib transforms the wall from mute material into a participant in history: not a static object, but a witness, a register, and a reminder of what remains.
     
  • Salma Dib (b. Damascus, 2000) is a Palestinian interdisciplinary artist whose practice spans painting, sculpture, and neon signage. Her work addresses the complexities of the diaspora experience and the realities of living through displacement, using symbolic abstractions to explore themes such as anonymity and the sense of being without a home. As the granddaughter of Palestinian refugees, her art reflects on the generational trauma passed down through wars and conflicts. During her time at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Salma focused on the study of exterior walls and heavy graffiti, examining their social impact on marginalized communities. This research continues to influence her work today.
     
    Salam Dib currently holding a solo exhibition titled ''Marks of Return'', Aisha Al Abbar Gallery, Dubai, UAE (2025). She Participated in multiple group exhibitions Menart Fair, Quartum Gallery, Rue de Turenne, Paris, France (2025), "No Trespassing", Ishara Art Foundation, Alserkal Avenue, Dubai UAE (2025),  Schal “The Woman from Different Perspectives, PAKD Gallery, Berlin, Germany (2025), Summer and Women at Etihad Modern Art Gallery, Abu Dhabi, UAE (2024), Open Studios at The Sima Collective, Dubai (2023), Silent Auction at Ren House, Dubai, UAE (2023), Embodied History at Site Galleries, Chicago, IL, USA (2021), and Bright Line at The Latent Space, Chicago, IL, USA (2021).
     
    Salma holds a BFA with a concentration in Painting and Neon Signage from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, USA (2022).