Kuwaiti-Puerto Rican artist Alia Farid (b. 1985) works with a range of media including textile, drawing, film, and sculpture to make visible the registers of narratives, stories, and ways of knowing omitted by western hegemony. The exhibition title Bneid Al Gar, Arabic for land of tar, refers to Farid’s experiences growing up in an area of Kuwait where large bruise-like stains of oil once punctuated the surface of the earth.
The Lise Wilhelmsen Art Award is presented biannually to recognise the contribution of an outstanding international artist making work that is important and relevant to our time. The award of an artistic honorarium of $100,000 USD, an exhibition at the Henie Onstad Kunstsenter, and an acquisition budget for the inclusion of the artist’s work in the Henie Onstad Collection, together place the programme amongst the most significant art awards internationally.
Caroline Ugelstad, Chair of the Lise Wilhelmsen Art Award Programme (LWAAP) Jury, and Director of Collection and Exhibitions at Henie Onstad Kunstsenter, said: “Together with the Lise Wilhelmsen Art Award we are proud to present the first exhibition showcasing all of Alia Farid’s major works to date, offering an in-depth view into the artist’s multifaceted practice. Farid works across different visual expressions, techniques, and craft traditions. The way she produces her works is closely linked to the themes she probes. She is particularly concerned with migration and the movement or change of people, places, traditions, times, and material cultures as a result of geopolitical events. The Jury has great faith in Farid’s future artistic career and hopes the award will help develop her artistic practice.”
Ugelstad is curating the exhibition together with María Inés Rodriguez, LWAAP Jury Member and Director of the Walter Leblanc Foundation.
About the exhibition:
Alia Farid: Bneid Al Gar presents a series of handwoven and embroidered textile works from the series Elsewhere (2023), where Farid explores the styles, symbols, and rituals that emerge from processes of migration from one point of the global south to another. The motifs highlighted in the tapestries are culled from photographs, archival material, and conversations with members of the Palestinian diaspora in Puerto Rico. The textiles are created in close collaboration with weavers in southern Iraq, highlighting new meanings, forms, and expressions of shared struggle and solidarity.
Five sculptures from the series In Lieu of What Is (2022) and the installation Palm Orchard (2022) will also be on display at Henie Onstad. In In Lieu of What Is, Farid interrogates the material, political, and cultural aftereffects of the oil industries extractive practices. The large sculptures, inspired by public drinking fountains in the Arabian Gulf, trace connections to natural bodies of water and how they continue to be impacted by desalination plants. Palm Orchard, exhibited in the outdoor area of the museum, consists of artificial palm trees rendered in plastic and LED lights. Together with her films Chibayish 2022, 2023, these works highlight how ecosystems are targeted as a tactic of war and the loss of intergenerational knowledge that results from environmental degradation.
The exhibition will be accompanied by a comprehensive catalogue with new texts by Andrea Andersson, Ruba Katrib, and Maru Pabón and a conversation with María Inés Rodriguez. In collaboration with Henie Onstad, Alia Farid will produce a limited edition artwork for sale. A talk with Alia Farid is programmed for Saturday, 14 September at 12pm.
Press release from the Henie Onstad Kunstsenter
Image: Alia Farid. Elsewhere: El Nilo Restaurante (Menú II). 2023. Image courtesy of the artist
