Farah Salem (she/her) is a Kuwaiti-Iraqi interdisciplinary artist and art therapist based in Chicago. Farah’s studio practice is rooted in photography, expanding through video, performance, fiber-materials, and installation. Her origins in photography influence the ways she uses materials to sensorily embody concepts she grapples with. Through relational merging and mapping of human and geological bodies, she visions their liberation. By doing so, she examines themes of agency, making the invisible visible, and potential erosion of socio-cultural conditioning distorting our shared realities. Her visual arts and somatic-centered art therapy practices are independent; however, they intersect in her professional training, informing her artistic exploration of how trauma manifests in the body by incorporating tools from ancestral healing wisdom for the recovery of the somatic experience while relating to the natural world.
Farah holds a Master of Arts in Art Therapy and Counseling from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her artwork has been featured nationally and internationally at Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Museum of Contemporary Photography (Chicago), EXPO CHICAGO, American University Museum (Washington D.C.), United Photo Industries/Photoville Gallery (New York), Patel Brown (Toronto), Engage Gallery (Chicago), Bolivia Biennial, Paris Contemporary Art Fair, Sharjah Art Foundation (UAE), and Contemporary Art Platform (Kuwait). Farah completed the Radicle Studio Residency at Hyde Park Art Center (Chicago), Hatch Residency at Chicago Artists Coalition, ACRE Artist Residency (Steuben), Per|Form at Contemporary Art Platform (Kuwait) and Journey to Turkey Residency with Crossway Foundation (UK).
The Covenant: A rite of protection, 2023.
Performance Photography, Cowrie reimagined ceremonial headdress
Featured Artworks
Lithostatic 4, 2022.
Image by Farah Salem.
Uninhibited: People of the Earth (Video Installation), 2023.
Performance Video montaged with Archival footage, Sand, Floor Seat.
Image by Darren Rigo.
Lithostatic 1 (Wall Installation), 2023. Framed inkjet photographic prints, Photographic print on phototex wall installation.
Image by Tran Tran.
Uninhibited Headdress and Manjour of Freedom on Topographic Desert Landscape, 2023.
Image by Steven Piper.
Power to See, 2019.
Image by Farah Salem.