Farah Al Qasimi: Everywhere there is splendor

Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis

September 3, 2021 - February 27, 2022

Farah Al Qasimi creates a newly commissioned, photo-based installation across CAM’s Project Wall, her largest site-specific museum work to date. Al Qasimi has long documented and created alternative narratives of Arab culture, style, taste, and interior spaces. For her CAM exhibition she focuses on her personal family history through a lens of intimacy and interiority. In early 2021, during Al Qasimi’s time in quarantine after traveling to the United Arab Emirates, she photographed in and around her family home, referencing an old family album documenting their westward migration. She re-examined the significance of a personal archive, using the ubiquitous floral tablecloths, garments, wallpaper, and interior decor of her childhood. Reflecting on the past year and the uncertainty of the future, Al Qasimi found it ever more urgent to deepen her connection with her family’s past through these images, expanding on notions of cultural hybridity—living between multiple cultures—as well as ideas around labor and means of production in relation to her family history.

Farah Al Qasimi: Everywhere there is splendor is organized for the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis by Wassan Al-Khudhairi, Chief Curator.