Alia Farid. From the series “Elsewhere”. Produced by Chisenhale Gallery, London. Commissioned by Chisenhale Gallery; Passerelle Centre d’art contemporain, Brest.
” … Whether working with Samawa weavers in Iraq, fountain fabricators in Kuwait, or young residents of the Chibayish marshlands, Farid says, ‘Much of the process is developing the craft together.’
Elsewhere (1 December 2023–4 February 2024), Alia Farid’s solo show at Chisenhale Gallery in London, was the first presentation of a research project tracing Arab and South Asian migration to Latin America and the Caribbean.
In this iteration, Farid focused on the Palestinian diaspora in Puerto Rico, where she grew up. Opening the show was Gastronomía platos (Tierra Santa)(2023), a screenprinted photograph showing a tray of dishes on a table in Tierra Santa, a Palestinian-owned restaurant in San Juan, framed in the gallery’s entrance.
Tierra Santa is depicted in one of the 16 hand-woven and embroidered rugs with earthy, red-scale tones that hang side by side, varying in length and width, in two parallel rows from the ceiling. Each rug draws on spaces defining Puerto Rico’s Palestinian communities, including a mosque in Fajardo with a silhouette that echoes Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque, forming a cityscape in the main gallery.”
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