Artistic Residency of Alia Farid

Casa Árabe, with the cooperation of Delfina Foundation, has invited artist Alia Farid to complete an artistic residency at its headquarters in Cordoba. 

Alia Farid (n. 1985) is a Kuwaiti-Puerto Rican artist who works with materials and formats which she often discovers through the environments which she explores. She defines her work in the following way: “I began to explore my work as an artist at a point somewhere between art, architecture and public space. As of today, I remain interested in exploring these areas, but with a much greater focus on explaining how informal networks are required to make up for their lack of formal structures, because one of the things I value the most is the subversive quality of art which goes unnoticed.”

In February 2013, during her first visit to Cordoba, Alia was inspired by a set of marks she saw on the ground in the area around the Mosque-Cathedral of Cordoba, and she uses this silhouette in the design for a flower pot, in the form of a siyadeh (the rug which is used for prayer in Islam).
 
During the artistic gardening workshop, Alia and a select group of participants will be working on the design and cultivation of “siyadeh flower pots” transformed into the act of prayer during the everyday activity of gardening. The final result will be displayed in the entrance patio of Casa Árabe during the Cordoba Patios Festival from May 8 through 19 to commemorate the recognition granted by UNESCO to the Festival of Patios as Intangible World Cultural Heritage in December 2012.

On Monday, April 29 at 7:30 p.m., artist Alia Farid will be holding a talk on art with the public interested in becoming familiar with her career and her work, in terms of the different environments in which she has been involved.