Farah Salem is a Kuwaiti-Iraqi Chicago-based multidisciplinary artist and art therapist. Her studio and art therapy practices are bridged by socially engaged artistic and therapeutic practices. In her studio practice, she finds subtle affinities between geologic time, somatic movement, the human psyche, gendered trauma, ceremonial music/dance and healing rituals from the Arabian Peninsula. Through relational merging and mapping of human and geological bodies, she visions their liberation. By doing so, she examines themes of access, agency, power, the invisibly visible, and the potential erosion of the socio-cultural conditioning that distorts our shared realities.
Her current research explores two parallel threads, first, the renegotiation of trauma within an extracted, and trauma-endured body as it moves towards belonging and re-emerges as a liberated body. Second, she attunes to the experience of being desensitized and disembodied from the earth, and reorient the body towards a reciprocal relationship with the earth. She explores these concepts through her artistic process that moderates the somatic and internal tensions of grief and acceptance by tracing and re-embodying migratory ancestral healing practices that link bodies and land.
Salem holds an MA in Art Therapy and Counseling from School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a BA in Visual Communications from Gulf University for Science and Technology. Salem’s artwork has been featured at Museum of Contemporary Art (Chicago), Museum of Contemporary Photography (Chicago), Expo Chicago Art Fair, American University Museum: Katzen Art Center (Washington DC), United Photo Industries (New York), Bolivia Biennial (Santa Cruz), Paris Contemporary Art Fair, Sharjah Art Foundation (UAE), and Contemporary Art Platform (Kuwait).
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