Ayan Farah
Ayan Farah
How do we define a place? Ayan Farah’s work is marked by her deep interest in the geographical and geopolitical characteristics of the places she spends time in, most recently Sweden, Senegal and England. In these places, she collects minerals, soil or plants such as indigo, which she later uses in her studio to produce pigments for dyeing. The “pictorial ground” always consists of historical textiles from the 18th and 19th centuries, which Ayan Farah cuts up into individual fragments for dyeing and later sews together again by hand and machine to form strict compositions. During the dyeing process, the textiles become “ vessels” of the geographical characteristics of certain places as well as their socio- and geopolitical characteristics. At the same time, the textiles are “places of memory” of the stories of their former owners, often “marked” by hand-embroidered initials that refer to past times as an “index” and now become part of Ayan Farah’s works. This “cyclical” approach to textiles, which is currently finding expression in pop culture in the form of “recycled fashion”, is based on Ayan Farah’s biographical roots in Somalia where the collection and processing of textiles with hand embroidery has been practiced by her family. Ayan Farah’s keen eye for the availability of natural resources is also based on the fact that her ancestors were nomads who, depending on water and natural resources, moved from place to place and adapted their way of life to their immediate surroundings.
Born in 1978 in Sharjah, UAE, to Somali parents, Ayan Farah spent her childhood in Sweden before moving to London, where she earned her MA at the Royal College of Art. She lives and works in Stockholm. Recent grants and residencies include the Roberts Institute of Art Residency, Scotland; Black Rock, Dakar; and Sven-Harrys Konstmuseum, Stockholm. In 2026, she will exhibit at the Somali Pavilion at the Venice Biennale. Recent solo and group exhibitions include We Grown-Ups Can Also Be Afraid: Creativity in Times of Crisis, Attenborough Arts Centre, Leicester (UK); Black Rock Sénégal / Dak’art Biennale, Dakar (SN); Stockholm Cosmology, Liljevalchs Konsthall, Stockholm (both 2024); as well as prominent group shows at El Espacio 23, Miami (US); Cromwell Place, London (Roberts Institute of Art, UK); Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, Norwich (UK); Fondazione Prada, Venice (IT, all 2023); Hunterian Art Gallery, Glasgow (UK); Bundeskunsthalle, Bonn (DE); The New Art Centre, Salisbury (UK, all 2022); Tarble Arts Centre, Eastern Illinois University, US; Whitechapel Gallery, London (both 2018); and Fondation Hippocrène, Paris (FR, 2014). Her works are represented in institutional collections including Moderna Museet, Stockholm (SE); Kadist Foundation, Paris (FR); Stockholm konst (SE); Kunstpalast, Düsseldorf (DE); Sammlung Zeitgenössischer Kunst der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (DE); Public Art Agency Sweden (SE); The Hill Collection, New York (US); El Espacio 23, Miami (US); and the David and Indré Roberts Collection, London (UK).
