Adham Faramawy
BEMIS CENTER
UB ART GALLERIES
Adham Faramawy’s Skin Flick exists both as a single-channel video and as an iterative multi-channel installation, in which the infectious video operates as a versioning vector, reconfiguring its host assemblage anew each time it is presented. For I don’t know you like that, the shape-shifting work manifests on three synchronized flatscreens fanning from a vertical, recycled-lumber structure erected in a sprawling pile of dirt, plastic, and shaving cream cans to tell its story of becoming. This structure confers the work a certain monumentality, which the multiple screens trouble, inviting visitors to come to it with all their senses. The video offers up a luscious interplay of porous bodies and unstable substances, narrating their slippery dreams of eternal youth and enacting fluid pleasures. A horned narrator, neither/both human n/or monster, slides in and off of the screens, eventually retelling the myth of Daphne’s becoming-vegetal—a story of interspecies transition, of survival through resistance, both passive and invasive. At work, here, is a fluid, unbound body that asserts the magnificence of being multiple—host, guest, and ghost.
BIOGRAPHY
Adham Faramawy is an artist based in London. Their work spans media including moving image, sculptural installation, and print, thinking through issues of materiality, touch, and toxic embodiment to question ideas of the natural in relation to marginalized communities. They lecture at both Goldsmiths University in London and Ruskin School of Art in Oxford.
Faramawy’s work has been exhibited in solo shows at The Bluecoat, Liverpool, and Niru Ratnam Gallery, London, and in group shows at Whitechapel Gallery, Somerset House, and Serpentine Gallery in London. In 2018 they presented a show on the body and VR for BBC Radio 4. In 2019 they premiered their video piece Skin Flick at a screening at Tate Britain dedicated to their work. In 2022 they performed their first live work as part of the Serpentine Ecologies program Back to Earth. They were shortlisted for the Jarman Award in 2017 and 2021.
PROGRAMS
PRESS
Gregory Volk, “What is Hospitality in an Era of Crisis?” Hyperallergic, February 16, 2023.
Christina Nafziger, “Review: I don’t know you like that: The Bodywork of Hospitality,” SixtyInchesFromCenter.org, June 30, 2022.
Christina Nafziger, “Approaches and Strategies within Hospitality: An Interview with Sylvie Fortin,” SixtyInchesFromCenter.org, June 30, 2022.
Jonathan Orozco, “I don’t know you like that,” The Reader, February 25, 2022.
Adham Faramawy
BEMIS CENTER
UB ART GALLERIES
Adham Faramawy’s Skin Flick exists both as a single-channel video and as an iterative multi-channel installation, in which the infectious video operates as a versioning vector, reconfiguring its host assemblage anew each time it is presented. For I don’t know you like that, the shape-shifting work manifests on three synchronized flatscreens fanning from a vertical, recycled-lumber structure erected in a sprawling pile of dirt, plastic, and shaving cream cans to tell its story of becoming. This structure confers the work a certain monumentality, which the multiple screens trouble, inviting visitors to come to it with all their senses. The video offers up a luscious interplay of porous bodies and unstable substances, narrating their slippery dreams of eternal youth and enacting fluid pleasures. A horned narrator, neither/both human n/or monster, slides in and off of the screens, eventually retelling the myth of Daphne’s becoming-vegetal—a story of interspecies transition, of survival through resistance, both passive and invasive. At work, here, is a fluid, unbound body that asserts the magnificence of being multiple—host, guest, and ghost.
BIOGRAPHY
Adham Faramawy is an artist based in London. Their work spans media including moving image, sculptural installation, and print, thinking through issues of materiality, touch, and toxic embodiment to question ideas of the natural in relation to marginalized communities. They lecture at both Goldsmiths University in London and Ruskin School of Art in Oxford.
Faramawy’s work has been exhibited in solo shows at The Bluecoat, Liverpool, and Niru Ratnam Gallery, London, and in group shows at Whitechapel Gallery, Somerset House, and Serpentine Gallery in London. In 2018 they presented a show on the body and VR for BBC Radio 4. In 2019 they premiered their video piece Skin Flick at a screening at Tate Britain dedicated to their work. In 2022 they performed their first live work as part of the Serpentine Ecologies program Back to Earth. They were shortlisted for the Jarman Award in 2017 and 2021.
PROGRAMS
PRESS
Gregory Volk, “What is Hospitality in an Era of Crisis?” Hyperallergic, February 16, 2023.
Christina Nafziger, “Review: I don’t know you like that: The Bodywork of Hospitality,” SixtyInchesFromCenter.org, June 30, 2022.
Christina Nafziger, “Approaches and Strategies within Hospitality: An Interview with Sylvie Fortin,” SixtyInchesFromCenter.org, June 30, 2022.
Jonathan Orozco, “I don’t know you like that,” The Reader, February 25, 2022.