Alia Farid

Commissioned by Sharjah Art Foundation, Alia Farid’s recent work explores the material impact of oil extraction in the Arab Gulf through two predominant materials; blue faience, an aqua glaze that dates back 6000 years, and polyester resin, a byproduct of petroleum production that originated in the 20th century. This work, from a series of six plates commissioned for Sharjah Biennial 16, builds on research conducted in Stanford University into thousands of Iraqi objects and records withheld in the US. The work encompasses the artist’s ongoing experiments with a type of resin manufactured by United Oil Projects called Kupol LR 3303 which she layers with images tracing her matriarchal lineage as well as Iraqi spiritual traditions that assume the form of charts and cosmological maps.