Fariba Alam

Through my work, I seek to reimagine the boundaries that have been imposed on the female body by rigid definitions of self, otherness and so-called “essentialist” mythologies. I create large-scale photo installations by integrating tile works, painting, archival photographs and self-portraits. I engage a broad spectrum of the photographic tradition—from black & white to digital, from anthropological to personal—in order to give history the immediacy of the present, and to establish the notion of identity as an undulating continuum.

I draw from a broad range of narratives, including religious and secular allegories, mathematical diagrams, calligraphy and architectural blueprints. By working with collective spatial history, asynchronous imagery and personal memory in a single frame, I seek to engage notions of displacement and loss—and through that same lens, self-fortitude and redemption.

I’m also drawn to the dual mysticisim and hard science of the idea that life unfolds in defined and continuous patterns. On the path to illumination, Sufi mystics move between these ever-changing spiritual states (or ahwal), experiencing a wide range of sensations—constraint and expansion, fear and hope, longing and intimacy. Repetition and symmetry become anchors in both my process and visual language, as does the notion of the body as territory or vessel in spiritual and erotic yearnings. I explore Islamic and minimalist techniques of serial repetition to convey a site of transition that is all at once grounded, and yet propelled by a constant force of movement and flux.

By mixing multiple visual art mediums and narrative threads, I consider a new psychology and context for documenting the female body’s fracture, emergence and ascent.