Alma Salem

Alma Salem is a Syrian-Canadian curator and human rights defender. She worked for a decade at the French Institute of the Near East and created the first digital Levant bank of images in her book “Photographies du Levant”. She also participated in the creation of the first Aerial Atlas of Syria. She joined the British Council for another decade and specialized in international cultural relations. She also served as a director for the arts programs in the Arab region until the end of 2015.
Since 1995, she has been participating in several exhibitions in Khan Assad Pasha in the Old City of Damascus in collaboration with Nicéphore Niépce museum in France and in “Athar Al-Mashrek” at the Arab World Institute in Paris. This achievement allowed her to document and protect the Syrian heritage.
In 2015, she founded the multimedia platform “Syria Sixth Space”. She toured internationally with her roaming exhibitions from the UK, Ireland, the USA, the Netherlands, Belgium and India to refugee camps in Syria’s neighboring countries.
She works as an art curator, trainer, researcher and lecturer in several universities and artistic forums and a founding member of the Curatorial Institute at BANFF Center for Arts and Creativity in Canada. She is also a member of the “TURBA” journal advisory board. Salem is a permanent fellow of the DeVos Institute for arts management at Maryland University in Washington.
Alma is a human rights defender and activist for freedom of artistic expression and empowers women to participate in the political decision-making in Syria.
She is currently the consultant for Women International League for Peace and Freedom and Peace and Stabilization Operations Program at Global Affairs Canada.