Surge

Farah Al Qasimi

Farah Al Qasimi creates vibrant photographic vignettes of both spontaneous and staged scenarios in the Persian Gulf and the United States. Her images emphasize the subtle remnants of colonial influence within the minutiae of ordinary life. Al Qasimi plays with the uncanny geographies informed by migration, displacement, and foreign intervention.She also considers the diaspora in her works. For a Public Art Fund commission in New York in 2020, she homed in on the awe-inspiring, oft-overlooked aesthetics of immigrant neighborhoods in the city, like a chandelier sparkling in a Yemeni-owned bodega; the series of 17 photographs, titled “Back and Forth Disco,” hung on 100 bus shelters across New York City. Al Qasimi is featured in The Artsy Vanguard 2020.