Emirati photographer Farah Al Qasimi exhibits at the French photography festival

Emirati photographer Farah Al Qasimi’s Exhibition titled ‘Imitation of Life’ is on view as part of Les Rencontres d’Arles, a photography festival taking place in Arles, France.

The event has taken over the Provencal city during the summer months every year since 1970. It plays an influential role in establishing an appreciation for photography – in 2019, it attracted 145,000 visitors – but owing to the pandemic, it was postponed last year. Now, it’s back in full swing, having opened at the start of July. Presenting material that has never been publicly viewed before, Les Rencontres d’Arles gives exposure to new talents.

For this year, it has undergone a transformation in leadership and structure. New director Christoph Wiesner took the lead during the pandemic and proposed a fresh curatorial approach for the event’s Louis Roederer Discovery Award, for which art institutions present the work of up-and-coming talent, with the prize being an acquisition to the tune of €15,000 ($17,657).

Al Qasimi’s exhibition, is on view as part of this segment of the festival, alongside nine other shortlisted photographers from far-reaching social and cultural contexts.

Though Al Qasimi currently lives in Brooklyn, New York, her work zooms in on daily life in the UAE, as well as aspects of identity along the intersections of gender, nationality, and social class.

Al Qasimi’s installation comprises eight photographs varying in scale and orientation, which are part of an ongoing series. They hang against a backdrop that depicts a scene from a furniture store in Sharjah.

Drawing from the codes of portraiture in the western painting practice, as well as documentary photography, Al Qasimi subverts fixed notions of how the image might be constructed and read. Her scenes feel both staged and as though they are revealing something intimate; they continue to unravel the more they are observed. She also regularly captures her realities as she encounters them, returning to her images later to organise them into projects and develop the conceptual framework.

Her subjects are lodged in the domestic realm, spaces populated with opulent interiors from kitsch cartoon characters to tiny floral prints. The traces of several (and conflicting) cultural elements are apparent, some characteristic of the Arabian Gulf, while others are remnants of British colonialism. The presence of hypermodernity, through the foregrounding of the iPhone and the invasion of high technology in the home space, is also palpable. It’s a heterogenic mix of visual elements that illuminate some of the more intimate spaces inhabited by the UAE’s upper-middle-class youths today.

Goat Farm Majlis (2021) reveals the humour that regularly underpins Al Qasimi’s practice, as unexpected intruders – two goats – escape the agricultural context and arrive in the living room. Together these images offer a glimpse into contradictions – between tradition and modernity, and inner and exterior worlds – that she might encounter behind closed doors.

Imitation of Life also defies what Voss has identified as a trend among the other exhibitors. “Al Qasimi’s images comprise bursts of colour and daring compositions, they are full and saturated. This works well in juxtaposition with the pieces by other artists that are black and white and more minimalistic,” she says.

Les Rencontres Des Arles is on view until Sunday, September 26.