Cover of El Sabah magazine 1932

The Na’ima al-Misriyya Project
Farid is currently working on the multidisciplinary art/research documentation project that will produce a book, digital music archive and documentary film about this early 20th century phonograph era of Egyptian Arabic music performer.

www.naima-project.org

Amid Basalt Strategies (2005-series, colour digital prints) investigates the wall and bridge, two opposite architectural forms (separating/connecting) looking at how settlements are planned and built to include/exclude populations. Amid is the ancient name for Diyarbakir, in southwestern Turkey, rich with traces of human habitation over centuries, always reacting to political forces.
“the speaking subject” Part I,II,III (1991-2002-series, silver prints) investigates landscape as choreographed storytelling. It looks to history, continually rewritten, as our understanding of Science evolves and our inter-relationship to nature/land becomes more precise. The photographs act as icons, revealing the dichotomy between science and belief systems.
genius loci (2003-series silver prints, C-prints) is an investigation from pure landscape to pure urbanscape and attempts to address theory-based concepts about land and land use and how these concepts are grafted on to sites. In Roman mythology, a genius locus was the protective spirit of a place. In contemporary usage, it usually refers to a location's distinctive atmosphere, or a sense of place.
All three series are an installation of phrases or chapters, as if one is reading a text.

Unfolding Posture, 1991-92, Canada
This work explores feminine identity as it re-defines itself, as expressed through movements of the body. The absence of gravity allows for a more unusual vocabulary of movement to develop, an expansion in language, a metaphor for overcoming restriction.
11 min. video project entitled “unfolding posture”.

Unfolding Posture 1992

Farid is also a founding boardmember of the Contemporary Image Collective – Cairo (Markaz as-Surah el-Mua'srra) an independent artist-run initiative dedicated to the Visual Image.

www.ciccairo.com