The third winner of the Lise Wilhelmsen Art Award, Kuwaiti-Puerto Rican artist Alia Farid, is showing her work in the exhibition, Bneid Al Gar, held at the Henie Onstad Kunstsenter in Oslo, Norway. Farid's work is a captivating exploration of geopolitical, social, and material histories. On view from September 13, 2024 - January 5, 2025, Bneid Al Gar, which translates to ‘land of tar’ in Arabic, refers to Farid's experiences growing up in an area of Kuwait where shadowy oil stains once marked the landscape. The exhibition presents four pivotal works of her career alongside new creations on paper. Known for creating art that spans film, sculpture, and installation, Farid blends contemporary practices with cultural tradition, highlighting the layers of history embedded in our present-day surroundings. By drawing connections between her experiences in the Middle East and the Caribbean, Farid opens up dialogues about identity, resistance, and transformation.

In the exhibition catalogue, Maria Inés Rodriguez, co-curator, LWAAP Jury Member and Director of the Walter Leblanc Foundation, highlights how Farid’s work consistently creates “a dialogue between the viewer and the environment around them.” Rodriguez recalls encountering Farid's work during her solo exhibition at Kunstinstituut Melly in Rotterdam in 2020, where her installations “reflected both symbolic and real connections between word and image, poetry and life, as well as with the two regions in which she grew up: the Caribbean and the Middle East”. In Bneid Al Gar, this ongoing dialogue expands into new terrains.

Farid's reflections on materiality are at the heart of her artistic practice. She believes, "...materials carry meaning. They are loaded with history, culture, and politics – things that are irreducible to and indissociable from the material itself." Farid often utilises resin in her sculptures, a material intrinsically linked to oil extraction and the global economy. "Resin and plastics are both polymers and byproducts of oil," she explains. "It's a material with linkages to colonialism, modernity, oil extraction, and the weaponisation of water. These things are all entangled in this one material."

Farid's work also resonates with universal themes. Taking inspiration from the Gulf and the Caribbean allows her to connect seemingly disparate geographies and explore their shared histories. In the exhibition, works including In Lieu of What Was (2019) and In Lieu of What Is (2022) focus on the materiality of water containers, highlighting how a simple everyday object can have multiple levels of meaning. Farid says, "The plastic water bottle is the only silhouette repeated in both iterations... I wanted the focus to be on the varying silhouettes and the geographical information that seeing them in unison conveys."

Farid’s outdoor installation, Palm Orchard, features brightly coloured artificial palm trees with mechanical components, resembling festive fireworks. These trees act as gravestones for the destroyed palm orchards in southern Iraq, symbolising the devastation caused by the war. In her films Chibayish (2022, 2023), Farid examines the ecological impact of oil industries on southern Iraq and Kuwait.

I am also intrigued by…the correlations or translations of forms across time and space. How materials and forms have the capacity to show up in both mundane and sacred ways… – Alia Farid

This exploration of water and its cultural significance has roots in Farid's earlier projects, such as her participation in the 2014 Venice Biennale. In Venice, Farid installed a drinking fountain in the shape of a Kuwaiti water tower in front of the Nordic Pavilion, as a symbolic gift from the Kuwait Pavilion. This act, she explains, was an attempt to underline how the Biennale privileged and visibilised presentations by countries in the Global North. It was a powerful statement about the representation of 'Third World' countries in the global art scene. She notes, in a conversation with Rodriguez, "The idea was to return this imported form to its country of origin... It felt like a way to counter the submission and passiveness assigned to us 'Third World' countries."

Aside from material, Farid is equally fascinated by form and how it changes its meaning across different contexts. "I am also intrigued by…the correlations or translations of forms across time and space. How materials and forms have the capacity to show up in both mundane and sacred ways," she says. Her sculptures reflect this interest in the hybrid nature of form and process. Farid's practice of using moulds—an industrial process for mass production—paradoxically results in unique pieces, a play on the inherent contradictions in production methods within contemporary art.

A significant aspect of Farid's practice lies in her collaborative work with local communities. As Caroline Ugelstad, Director of the Collection and Exhibitions and Chief Curator at Henie Onstad Kunstsenter, said to STIR, "Alia Farid spends time with various local communities in selected geographical areas and examines them on a micro-level through seeing, hearing, and being with the people she works with." These intimate interactions are central to Farid's art, allowing her to reflect on the changes wrought by global forces while staying grounded in specific cultural traditions.

Farid’s ongoing project, Elsewhere, which began in 2012, reflects this engagement with space and place. It explores the relationship between the Arab world and Latin America, focusing on a series of mosques in Puerto Rico. "A postcard for each of the mosques in Puerto Rico: Fajardo, Vega Alta, Rio Piedras, Ponce, and Hatillo," Farid recalls. This project, which later expanded to other Caribbean islands, draws attention to the often overlooked connections between these two regions, presenting them through both photography and textile. The use of textiles is intentional – Farid sees textiles as carriers of information, with the materials themselves revealing details about the places they were made. "The conjured landscape of an elsewhere but also the information that can be gleaned from the material contents of a tapestry," she explains, underscoring this project's multi-layered nature.

The significance of textiles as a medium also reflects the environmental and cultural shifts caused by decades of war in Iraq, where she filmed Chibayish and collaborated with weavers to create the tapestries in her project Elsewhere. Um Mohammed, a master weaver at the workshop she worked with in Iraq, had a collection of antique izars (a traditional wraparound garment commonly used across the Arab world) and she observed how the natural ingredients once abundant in Iraq's landscape, like henna, safflower, and pomegranate skins, have largely disappeared. The colours in older textiles, made with natural dyes, differ significantly from those produced today, reflecting both environmental depletion and a shift toward synthetic materials. Farid notes, "What is left of Iraq is depleted earth." Her project Elsewhere intertwines these environmental and political realities, making visible the often invisible histories carried within everyday objects.

Farid's artistic practice is driven by a desire to question and resist dominant narratives. "Resistance, I would say, is the de facto position of an artist. We resist by transgressing internal and external boundaries and by asking questions all the time," she states. While not overtly political in her work, this approach is deeply embedded in her motivations. The material, cultural, and political histories she engages with carry an inherent resistance to the simplistic narratives often imposed on the regions she comes from and the materials she works with.

As Rodriguez points out, Farid's practice defies categorisation, moving fluidly between media and drawing from personal and collective histories. Whether through the textiles of Elsewhere or the bare, unpainted sculptures of In Lieu of What Is, her work reflects the ongoing transformation of both physical and cultural landscapes. By focusing on suppressed or marginalised histories, Farid aligns herself with artists who use their platforms to challenge dominant narratives while maintaining a lyrical, meditative quality in her art.

In Bneid Al Gar, Farid's work opens up space for viewers to contemplate entangled histories, encouraging reflection on the complexities of modern life. Through her sculptures, installations, and collaborative projects, she reimagines the world's materials and forms and invites viewers to reconsider their relationships with place, memory, and identity. This exhibition marks a milestone in her career, positioning her as a critical voice in contemporary discourse.

‘Bneid Al Gar’ runs at Henie Onstad Kunstsenter in Oslo, Norway from September 13, 2024 to January 5, 2025.