Biography

Farah Al Qasimi’s work explores how consumer culture seduces people, particularly women, with promises of beauty or self-improvement. Her practice moves fluidly between private and public spaces, but the content has primarily remained focused on locating the fantastic in the everyday.

Al Qasimi’s work has been shown at many solo exhibitions, including Surge, Francois Ghebaly, Los Angeles (2022); I Love Nature, The Island Club, Cyprus (2022); General Behavior, Abu Dhabi Cultural Foundation (2022); Letters for Occasions, Esker Foundation, Calgary (2022); Lady Lady, Cooper Cole, Toronto (2021); Funhouse, Helena Anrather, New York (2020); Brotherville, Wayne State University Undergraduate Library, Detroit (2020); Open Arm Sea, Houston Center for Photography (2019); Arrival, The Third Line, Dubai (2019); List Projects: Farah Al Qasimi, MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge (2019); More Good News, Helena Anrather, New York (2016); and Coming Up Roses, The Third Line, Dubai (2014).

She has also participated in several group exhibitions, including Experiences of Oil, Kunstmuseum Stavanger, Norway (2022); Wetland, Venice Architecture Biennale (UAE Pavilion)(2021); New Time: Art and Feminisms in the 21st Century, BAMPFA, Berkeley (2021); A Question of Taste, Pera Museum, Istanbul (2021); Yokohama Triennale (2020); Lahore Biennale 2 (2020); Age of You, Museum of Contemporary Art, Toronto (2019); Ishara: Signs, Symbols and Shared Languages, Concrete, Dubai (2017); Yale MFA Photography Thesis Show, Yale School of Art, New Haven (2017); Walls and Margins, Barjeel Art Foundation, Sharjah (2015); and First Biennial of Contemporary Arab Photography, Institut du Monde Arabe, Paris (2015).

She was awarded the Art Basel Miami Legacy Purchase Program Prize (2021); Aperture/Paris Photo Prize, Book of the Year Shortlist (2021), New York and NADA Artadia Prize (2018). She received a Salama bint Hamdan Emerging Artists Fellowship, in partnership with the Rhode Island School of Design, Abu Dhabi (2014). She has also participated in residencies at the Delfina Foundation, London (2017) and Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Madison, US (2017).

Her work is in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Guggenheim Abu Dhabi; Tate Modern, London; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona; Barjeel Art Foundation, Sharjah and Abu Dhabi Music and Arts Foundation, among others.

Al Qasimi holds both a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in photography from Yale University, New Haven, US (2012-2017). Born in 1991 in Abu Dhabi, she currently lives and works between New York and Dubai.

SAF participation:
March Project 2019

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