Alia Farid

Alia Farid (b. 1985, Kuwait) is a Kuwaiti-Puerto Rican artist who divides her time between Kuwait and Puerto Rico. She works in sculpture, installation, video and textiles, making sculptures in polyester resin and fibreglass, amulets in blue faience, and embroidered and handwoven textiles.

In Lieu of What Is (2022) is made in polyester resin and fibreglass, and Amulets (2024) combines blue faience with polyester resin. For Elsewhere, begun in 2013, she has made textiles with some eighty weavers in Nasiriyah, southern Iraq. Her video Chibayish (2022), filmed in the marshlands of southern Iraq, follows young men calling to their water buffalo in a landscape of oil infrastructure.

She studied at the Escuela de Artes Plásticas de Puerto Rico, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Programa d'Estudis Independents at MACBA, Barcelona. Her solo exhibitions include Portikus, Frankfurt (2019), Kunsthalle Basel (2022), Chisenhale Gallery, London (2023) and Henie Onstad Kunstsenter (2024). She took part in the 32nd Bienal de São Paulo, the 12th Gwangju Biennale, Sharjah Biennial 14 and the 2022 Whitney Biennial. Her work is in the collections of Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago and the Whitney Museum of American Art. She is represented by Sfeir-Semler Gallery.