FARAH SALEM

A BODY KNOWING ITS EARTH

Farah Salem is a Kuwaiti-Iraqi immigrant, interdisciplinary artists, and art therapist based in Chicago. Socially engaged artistic and therapeutic practices bridge her studio and art therapy practices. Her studio practice is rooted in photography and expands to include video, performance, fiber-based materials, and installation.

Through relational merging and mapping of human and geological bodies, Farah envisions liberation of the body and the land. By doing so, she examines themes of access, agency, power, the invisibly visible, and theh potential erosion of the socio-cultural conditioning that distorts our shared realities. Her artistic goal has consistently been to bring multiple worlds together, capturing portals and spaces between them. She finds subtle affinities between geologic time, somatic movement, the human psyche, gendered trauma, ceremonial music/ dance, and healing rituals from the Arabian peninsula.

“My current research explores two parallel threads: the renegotiation of trauma within an extracted, trauma-endured body as it moves towards belonging and re-emerges as a liberated body..I am attuned to the experience of being desensitized and disembodied from the earth, reorienting the body towards a reciprocal relationship with the earth…These practices remind us to welcome vulnerability, be humbled by natural cycles, and live in reciprocity with the land.” - Farah Salem