Sal Saladra thread artist

Arixpelag Volume III cover story 3 of 4. NY based photographer Ivan Bideac visited the home of 83yo artist Sal Salandra, a self-taught artist based in East Hampton. After a 55-year career as a hairdresser, he turned his focus to needlepoint, a practice he began 40 years ago while bedridden with the flu and has pursued daily since.

In the past five years, Salandra’s brightly colored “thread paintings” have shifted toward explicit, large-scale scenes that merge Catholic imagery with sexual subculture. Drawing on religion, personal experience, and pornography, his meticulously stitched works recast fetish and devotion within the same frame.

An in-depth interview with Salandra by Arxipelag creative director Enrico Caputo appears as a 16-page special in the current issue of the magazine. During their conversation, a simple question sparked the idea for a new artwork: Love All Around the World, a bespoke piece created by Sal for Arxipelag.

The work will be unveiled across two exhibitions in April 2026—in Milan (21–26 April, Via Carlo Darwin 9) and in Paris, during a one-day launch event at Oddity (29 April, 27 Rue Notre-Dame-de-Nazareth, Le Marais).