Farah Al Qasimi

October 15, 2024

Farah Al Qasimi (b. 1991, Abu Dhabi) makes photographs, films, and music. Often working with large-scale vinyl imagery and a multiplicity of photographic prints and screens, she is interested in the internet and its hierarchies of information and emotion. Al Qasimi loves the complexity of storytelling and value-building in children’s cartoons, and many of her video works include primary narrators who are anthropomorphized. Through a highly collaborative practice, she has worked with hand-sewn puppets, falcons, African Land Snails, exorcists, and most recently, a Jack Sparrow impersonator. Her work is in the collections of MoMA New York, Tate Modern, Guggenheim New York, and Abu Dhabi, and she has participated in residencies at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine, Delfina Foundation in London, and the Chinati Foundation in Marfa. She attended Yale University, Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, and received her MFA from the Yale School of Art in 2017.

Can you tell us about your practice?

My practice is rooted in observing people in their everyday lives through photographs and short films.

You’ve said you are interested in “fictions that amplify the realities around us.” How do you think your focus on a lens-based practice lends itself to that line of inquiry?

We often demand that images deliver truthful content, even though we know how little of reality they actually represent. I’m interested in what goes on beyond the edges of a frame, and what a photograph can offer in what it doesn’t show you.

On the topic of lens-based practice, you work in both photography and film and to an extent – animation. Is there a particular dialog you see between these mediums? Do you approach it with different modes of thinking?

I see my films as semi-fictional temporal extensions of my still photographs: they take a moment and stretch it out in time, sometimes introducing characters or narratives that are fantastical and extraordinary. For example – I was photographing salt lakes around the UAE and I wanted to make a short film looking at the way desalination has shaped our marine ecosystems. Instead of making an essayistic documentary, I ended up with a short that was narrated by a mermaid and a land snail. I think fiction can be the filter that brings light to very real issues.

In your exhibition earlier this year, Toy World, you started introducing black and white images. Was it intentional to work in color up to this point? How does color (or the absence of it) play into your practice?

I’ve always worked in both black-and-white and color; I learned photography in the darkroom and color came later. Color is political, it carries meaning and gives us information about where we are. Sometimes in my work, the removal of context is just as important as the presence of it.

What has been inspiring you?

I am inspired by the people around me. My friend Diamond Stingily has a beautiful show, up at 52 Walker right now. My nieces and nephews make really cool drawings. I watch a lot of movies, too. I just rewatched the first two Alien movies.

What are you investigating these days? Is there anything we can look forward to seeing in the future?

I’ve been shooting in Dearborn, Michigan, a place I’ve been visiting for 5 years. I’m beginning research on a new short film there.

Farah Al Qasimi

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